enjoy, and highly prize,
These tokens of Thy love,
Till Thou shalt bid our spirits rise
To worship Thee above."
NEWTON.

_UNITY IN SELF-FORGETFULNESS: THE EXAMPLE OF THE LORD_

"Our glorious Leader claims our praise
For His own pattern giv'n;
While the long cloud of witnesses
Shew the same path to heav'n."
WATTS.

CHAPTER V

UNITY IN SELF-FORGETFULNESS: THE EXAMPLE OF THE LORD

PHILIPPIANS ii. 1-11

Dissensions incident to activity--Arguments for heart-union--"No
plunderer's prize"--"The name"--The tone of the great passage--What the
"Kenosis" cannot be--It guarantees the infallibility--Doctrine and
life--"Only thou"

In the section which we studied last we found the Apostle coming to the
weak point of the Christian life of the Philippians. On the whole, he
was full of thankful and happy thoughts about them. Theirs was no
lukewarm religion; it abounded in practical benevolence, animated by love
to Christ, and it was evidently ready for joyful witness to the Lord, in
face of opposition and even of persecution. But there was a tendency
towards dissension and internal separation in the Mission Church; a
tendency which all through the Epistle betrays its presence by the stress
which the Apostle everywhere lays upon holy unity, the unity of love, the
unity whose secret lies in the individual's forgetfulness of self.

Such dangers are always present in the Christian Church, for everywhere
and always saints are still sinners. And it is a sad but undeniable fact
of Christian history that the spirit of difference, dissension,
antagonism, within the ranks of the believing, is not least likely to be
operative where there is a generally diffused life and vigour in the
community. A state of spiritual chill or lukewarmness may even favour a
certain exterior tranquillity; for where the energies of conviction are
absent there will be little energy for discussion and resistance in
matters not merely secular. But where Christian life and thought, and
the expression of it, are in power, there, unless the Church is
particularly watchful, the enemy has his occasion to put in the seeds of
the tares amidst the golden grain. The Gospel itself has animated the
disciples' affections, and also their intellects; and if the Gospel is
not diligently used as guide as well as stimulus, there will assuredly be
collisions.

Almost every great crisis of life and blessing in the