What is it that holds it in its circuit round the sun, keeps it in orderly motion within the orbits of surrounding planets, unites to it the atmosphere that envelopes it, and prevents its satellite, the moon, from flying off into space? And he will call this force gravitation, and tell you that it operates not only in the solar system, but beyond it, the power of mutual attraction. But ask the theologian the same question; he will answer, God. And if, as our text tells us, God is Love, the power that makes for union-union, not mere adhesion, but harmonious combination-the two answers coincide.

Again, ask the chemist how it is that the eightyone primal elements are combined in an almost endless variety of substances, and that the smaller groups unite to form larger with new characteristics in boundless profusion; he will answer that it is because of their chemical affinity. Well, that is only a name used to denote a strange attractive force exercised by the different elements upon each other, stronger attractions overcoming weaker ones, and producing the world of beauty we see around us. He is ignorant of its real nature; he calls it chemical affinity. But if you had asked the ancient alchemist, who preceded the chemist, he would have used John's word. The old alchemists used to speak of the "loves" of the elements. What is it but another manifestation of the universal power that makes for union?

Do not call this teaching pantheism. The pantheist says the all is God, nothing exists but God; but if we say God is the power which in all things works for union, clearly we distinguish Him

from the things which by His working He unites. Unless, however, we think of God as immanent in His universe, as the power informing and working through all matter and all mind, we leave the pantheist-the spiritual pantheist, at any ratewith a great advantage on his side. For him the universe is a living thing, alive with the life of deity. But if, like the deists and some other old theologians, we set God up above His creation, altogether outside it, this fair world, with all its beauteous combinations of form and colour, is dead at the heart of it.

But to return-we trace this power that makes for union still upward through the various gradations of existence. We have found it in the form of gravitation and of chemical affinity. When we ascend from inert matter to living creatures what do we find? The bird seeking its mate; the eagle brooding over her young; the covey, the flock, the herd drawn together by some mysterious power which we cannot analyse, but which in its higher manifestations we already begin to call love. We find it not only in the pairing, the maternal, the gregarious instincts, but in more distinctive forms. Think of the absolute devotion of many domestic animals to their owners, and listen to the story, which Thomas Edwards, the Scottish naturalist, tells of a covey of sea-birds, one of which he had winged with his gun. It tumbled helpless on the sand. What did the rest? Fly away? Yes; but not without their wounded comrade. Two of them taking each a wing of the injured bird in their beaks rose aloft and bore him on with the others. They halted on a rock a little way out at sea. There the

bearers were changed, and the new ones spreading their pinions carried their burden round the coast to a place of safety. What made them? Whence this intensified form of gregarious instinct, this fellow-feeling, this willingness to risk danger sooner than leave their friend behind? Behold the power that works for union, that works according to the sphere in which it acts, producing higher results in the higher organism, the power whose name is Love.

Its highest sphere is man. How it manifests itself in this sphere I need not tell you, because you are all familiar with it. Nor will I stay, save in a word or two, to compare it with its manifestation in the lower animals. According to our sacred records, the creation of man differed from that of the lower animals herein, that God breathed into man the breath of His life. Of course I do not take that record as strictly historical, but I find it eminently suggestive. It suggests that while God is to some extent immanent in all His works, there is a fuller immanence in man, that while this power that makes for union works through all things, it works with greater intensity in man; and it is this mainly that has made man what he is. We have every reason to believe that man was at first barely raised above the brute creation; but powers were given him which were destined to raise him higher and higher notably these two-the perception, however faint, of a difference between the various impulses to action of which he was conscious as being some higher, some lower, in other words, a moral sense; and secondly, a greater capacity for love, in other words,

a stronger tendency to union. These two powers are really a fuller indwelling of God in him; and to these may be traced the marvellous development as compared with the almost stationary position of the lower animals. Of the first of these of how the rudimentary moral sense was stimulated by the exigencies of life and transmitted by heredity with increasing force in successive generations, I cannot now speak. Look only at the second-at the power that makes for union. Observe how, instead of stopping short at the family or the loose aggregate of the flock, as in the lower creatures, it has brought men into permanent association with each other as tribes and nations, wherein the mental faculties have been stimulated, the social affections cultivated, organised industry made possible, and a spirit of enterprise fostered, so developing human nature on every side—and elevating man in the scale of being. Do we not feel, at any rate when we experience it in its intenser degrees, that there is something truly divine in this power in ourselves, yet not of ourselves, which makes for union? If you have ever known a love so strong as to make you absolutely lose yourself in another, so that you thought his thoughts, felt his feelings, lived in his life, were bound up in him, as we say, you cannot but have been conscious that God was in that strong, absorbing love, the spring, the fount, the very essence of it. If you have ever known a love so wide as to be drawn thereby to some poor creature who had nothing in common with you but his bare humanity, drawn to him in spite of all the barriers of poverty, ignorance, coarseness and vice-if you have ever known the

impulse, I do not say to empty your purse into his hand, that is mere pity, but somehow to get near him and let into that darkened, depraved, joyless life, a little of the light and happiness and strength and purity of your own, then I am certain you have felt that impulse to be nothing less than divine, the very movement of God within your soul. You have known what John meant when he said, "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and He in him."

It may be rare to find such manifestations of this power as led the two Syrian missionaries, and more recently Father Damien, to go and join themselves for life to the lepers' community that they might be one with them, share their lot, and teach them about the love of God; but we do see this power manifesting itself in ever-increasing strength as the ages roll on, never so strong as at present. What is the meaning of this growing passion for union-this intensified hatred of slavery, this reaching out of friendly hands to the downtrodden millions at home and to heathen brethren over the sea, this phenomenon of internationalism, this growing horror of war, this impatience of all priestly castes and social barriers that tend to perpetuate class distinctions and separate man from man, this reaction against the old dogma which taught as the final destiny of the human race an eternal division into two sections, between which communion was for ever barred ? What is the meaning, the explanation of it all? Some may assign it to low, unworthy motives. But those whose eyes are not blinded will see in it God working with ever-increasing might in the