Then there was the ecclesiastical system—­the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible, earthly head.  Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete failure.  We now come to the system of commerce and trade.  We are told that that which chivalry and honour could not do—­which an ecclesiastical system could not do—­personal interest will do.  Trade is to bind men together into one family.  When they feel it their interest to be one, they will be brothers.  Brethren, that which is built on selfishness cannot stand.  The system of personal interest must be shivered into atoms.  Therefore, we, who have observed the ways of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have gone before.  And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and more bloody than the world has yet seen.  While men are talking of peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank:  east and west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of universal war.

Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the Cross of Christ—­a system that is not to be built upon selfishness, nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love.  Love, not self—­the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas of individual humanity.

One word only in conclusion.  Upon this, the great truth of the Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer.  He prays, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”  This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was, according to him, the great mystery of Love.  A Love, brighter, deeper, wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of.  But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of God.  How should we learn it more?  How should we comprehend the whole meaning of the Epiphany?  By sitting down to read works of theology?  The Apostle Paul tells us—­No.  You must love, in order to understand love.  “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.”  Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons—­one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and “those who are out of the way,” will tell us more of the meaning of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.

 XVI.