That Ye, Being Rooted and Grounded in Love
December 25.
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth,
and height; and to know the love of Christ,
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be
filled with all the fulness of God.
EPHESIANS 3, verses 17 to 19.
O love that passeth knowledge, thee I need;
Pour in the heavenly sunshine; fill my heart;
Scatter the cloud, the doubting, and the dread,
The joy unspeakable to me impart.
H. BONAR.
To examine its evidence is not to try Christianity;
to admire its martyrs is not to try Christianity;
to compare and estimate its teachers is not to try
Christianity; to attend its rites and services with
more than Mahometan punctuality is not to try or
know Christianity. But for one week, for one day,
to have lived in the pure atmosphere of faith and
love to God, of tenderness to man; to have beheld
earth annihilated, and heaven opened to the
prophetic gaze of hope; to have seen ever more
revealed behind the complicated troubles of this
strange, mysterious life, the unchanged smile of
an eternal Friend, and everything that is difficult
to reason solved by that reposing trust which is
higher and better than reason, to have known and
felt this, I will not say for a life, but for a single
blessed hour, that, indeed, is to have made
experiment of Christianity.
WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER.
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth,
and height; and to know the love of Christ,
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be
filled with all the fulness of God.
EPHESIANS 3, verses 17 to 19.
O love that passeth knowledge, thee I need;
Pour in the heavenly sunshine; fill my heart;
Scatter the cloud, the doubting, and the dread,
The joy unspeakable to me impart.
H. BONAR.
To examine its evidence is not to try Christianity;
to admire its martyrs is not to try Christianity;
to compare and estimate its teachers is not to try
Christianity; to attend its rites and services with
more than Mahometan punctuality is not to try or
know Christianity. But for one week, for one day,
to have lived in the pure atmosphere of faith and
love to God, of tenderness to man; to have beheld
earth annihilated, and heaven opened to the
prophetic gaze of hope; to have seen ever more
revealed behind the complicated troubles of this
strange, mysterious life, the unchanged smile of
an eternal Friend, and everything that is difficult
to reason solved by that reposing trust which is
higher and better than reason, to have known and
felt this, I will not say for a life, but for a single
blessed hour, that, indeed, is to have made
experiment of Christianity.
WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER.
