_CONNECTION AND CONCORD_
"_By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body._"
--1 CORINTHIANS xii. 12-19.
It is only in the spirit that real union is born. Every other kind of
union is artificial, and mechanical, and dead. We can dovetail many pieces
of wood together and make the unity of an article of furniture, but we
cannot dovetail items together and make a tree. And it is the union of a
tree that we require, a union born of indwelling life. We may join many
people together in a fellowship by the bonds of a formal creed, but the
result is only a piece of social furniture, it is not a vital communion.
There is a vast difference between a connection and a concord.
Many members of a family may bear the same name, may share the same blood,
may sit and eat at the same table, and yet may have no more vital union
than a handful of marbles in a boy's pocket. But let the spirit of a
common love dwell in all their hearts and there is a family bound together
in glorious union.
And so it is in the spirit, and there alone, that vital union is to be
found. And here is the secret of such spiritual union. "By one Spirit are
we all baptized into one body." The Spirit of God, dwelling in all our
spirits, attunes them into glorious harmony. Our lives blend with one
another in the very music of the spheres.