supernatural requirements expressed by Paul and Peter? For more
Training Garrisons with Cadets from among our own Young People, but we shall cease to be saviours of the lost sheep that have no shepherd. If the future of The Salvation Army is to still be glorious, we must heed the exhortation: 'Let brotherly love continue.' We must remember that all we are brethren and beware lest through leakage of love we become like the wicked of whom the Psalmist wrote: 'You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son (Psalm 50:20), and find our hearts full of strife and bitter envying where the love that suffers long and is kind should reign supreme. This is that for which Jesus pleaded on that last night before His crucifixion: 'This is My commandment, That you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. These things I command you, that you love one another.' This is that for which Paul pleaded and laboured: And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men . . to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in Holiness before God . . . at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ' (1 Thessalonians 3:12, 13). This is that to which Peter exhorted the universal church: 'Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit to unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently; . . . And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins ' (1 Peter 1:22; 4:8). 4. How else but by fullness of love for one another can we fulfil those supernatural requirements expressed by Paul and Peter? For more than forty years I have pondered and prayed over those two brief and searching words of Paul: 'Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love: in honour preferring one another,' 'Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.' These are lofty spiritual heights scaled only by those in whose pure hearts burns selfless love. In so far as this spirit rules in our hearts God can work with us and
bless us, and the spiritual triumphs and glory of The Army for the future are assured. But in so far as these graces of the Spirit in us fail, so far will The Army as a spiritual power in the earth fail. Akin to these words of Paul are those of Peter: 'The elders which are among you I exhort. . . Feed the flock of God, . . . not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre (or rank or power), but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves to the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility.' Nothing will so certainly insure the prosperous and happy future of The Army as this spirit, and I am persuaded that nothing other than this can insure it. This is the life, the pulsing, eager, satisfying, and yet ever unsatisfied, outreaching, world embracing life of The Army. Organization and Government are important, vastly important, for the direction and conservation of the activities of the life; but without the life the Organization is a bit of mere mechanism and the government is a pantomime. Finally, in closing, let me recommend to my comrades the world over, for prayerful study and meditation, Paul's farewell address to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus, recorded in Acts 20:17-35. Over and over again and again, through more than four decades, I have read and pondered that address, and prayed that the spirit that was in Paul might be in me and in all my comrades, for this is the spirit of Jesus. This is that for which He prayed on that last night of His agony as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John. And this is that, and that alone, which can and will insure the victorious and happy future of our world-wide Army.
THE END