Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 395Easter greeting of God's Fathership and His ownBrotherhood with them, the Church went forth intoall lands, being itself a brotherhood in Christ fromthe beginning. This brotherhood is altogether supernatural,springing from a double source, which wecan but trace up to the very Being of God, and leavethere to be unfolded in the light of eternity. Theone source is the infinite condescension which movedthe Eternal Father to send His coequal and coeternalSon in the likeness of man, creating thereby a raceof brethren by the tie of the nature which the Sonassumed; the other source is the infinite charity inwhich He gave the Son, when made Man, to be asacrifice for His brethren. The love of the Creatortherefore ran out into the love of the Redeemer, andwhen both had been combined, they formed thatbrotherhood of men with Christ, and therefore witheach other, of which we are speaking. The Churchthen in setting forth these transcendent mysteries,upon which she is built, included in them the wholedoctrine of the Creator and His creatures and theirco-creatureship together, but made it tenfold moreamiable by pouring upon it the light of an infinitecondescension and an infinite charity. It was in thisguise that brotherhood was taught to that vast multitudeof separated nations and races which made upthe Roman Empire; and in this guise it was acceptedby a large proportion of them. And thus in the verysoil desecrated by centuries of division and enmity, pollutedby idolatries without number and expression, the. result of gods not to be named for their foulness, wasintroduced again the conception of the true relation ofman to his fellow-men as creaturei of one God.This doctrine of brotherhood rin equally through