to himself and to them flows from his heart with a holy
freedom which is impossible except where the parties in religious
intercourse are indeed "one" in Him. Seven times in these eleven short
verses "Christ Jesus" is explicitly named; as the writer's Possessor;
as the Philippian saints' Life and Head; as the Giver to them, with His
Father, of grace and peace; as the Lord of the longed-for "Day," that
dear goal of hope; as the mighty Sphere of regenerate family-love; as
the Cause and Condition of the Christian's fruitfulness for God. His
presence, as it were, moves in the whole message, in the whole
intercourse of which the message is the expression. Writer and readers
perfectly "understand each other," for they both know Christ, and are
found in Him.

The same divine Cause tends always to similar effects. Unhappily it
does not always act without obstruction--obstruction which need not be.
There are no doubt obstructions to its action which are inherent in our
mortality; things which have to do really with physical temperament, or
again with external circumstances which we may be helpless to modify.
But the Cause, _in itself, tends always_ to the effects visible in this
noble passage of Christian affection. The possession and knowledge of
Jesus Christ, in spirit and in truth, tends always, by an eternal law,
to warm and open as well as to purify the human heart; to anchor it
indeed immoveably to God, but also to suffuse it with a gracious
sympathy towards man, and first and most of all towards man who is
also, in Christ, cognizant of the "free-masonry" of faith.

Let this be our first main Lesson in Faith and Love in our Philippian
studies. The section which we have traversed is full of points of
interest and importance otherwise; but this aspect of it is so truly
dominant that we may rightly take it for the true message of the whole.
Let us welcome it home. Let us question ourselves, in presence of it,
and before our Lord, first about our personal possession of the Cause,
and then about our personal manifestation of the effects. Let us put
to our own hearts some very old-fashioned interrogations: _Am I indeed
in Jesus Christ? Is He to me indeed Possessor, Lord, Giver of grace
and peace? Is my life so lived and my work so done in contact with Him
that through Him, and not merely through myself, "my fruit is found"?
Is His promised Day the goal and longing of my heart, as I submit
myself to Him that He may per