069. HUMANITY TO BE A PERFECT ORGANISM

HUMANITY TO BE A PERFECT ORGANISM And so the whole race is to be turned into a perfect organism, by being leavened with love. Humanity is to become a great moral personality which freely manifests the life of the Redeemer. Families, classes, nations, are to be articulated portions of his body, and all together, revealing his varied excellences and executing his will, are to reflect and to magnify the God who dwells in Christ as Christ dwells in his members. Thus our Lord’s petition shall be fulfilled, "that they all may be one." Jerusalem is "builded as a city that is compact together." Our Missionary Union, with its motive of love, and its organization of loving activities, and its presence of the loving Lord in the midst of it, is only a representation in miniature of the greater Jerusalem, the city and temple of the blest. In a recent address by Director Burnham of the Columbian Exposition, he declares that the great Chicago Fair was made possible only by the unselfish determination of the architects and artists to let no private and personal interests or preferences stand in the way of hearty co-operation toward the one common end. Many a plan had to be surrendered, many a wish to be given up, in order that the grand result might be achieved. Many a risk had to be run, many a sacrifice of time and money had to be made, before the triumph was made sure. But no one of all those designers or contributors is sorry, now that the whole world has confessed the Exposition to be in its way the greatest wonder of all time. Brethren of the Missionary Union, the White City has come and gone. Fire and frost have made way with most of its transient glories, and what is left will soon decay. But there is another grander city rising beneath the sky,—it is the city of God, the city of the saved, the city in which Christ dwells and reigns. We are permitted to put our hands to the building of it. It will rise solidly and rapidly, only as we give up our private and personal ambitions, only as we merge our interests in the great whole, only as we make large and free our gifts for Christ and for humanity. Let us not be lacking in our faith or in our works, in our loving or in our doing, for we are setting up the crowning wonder of the ages. This city of redeemed humanity will abide when all the palaces of earth shall perish; it alone hath eternal foundations, for its builder and maker is God.