§ 121. All who are living in the state of sanctification feel an inward impulse to become more and more one in their common co-operative activity and reciprocal influence, and are conscious of this as the common Spirit of the new corporate life founded by Christ. 1. This fact itself is expressed in the most definite way in all the scriptural accounts of the first planting of the Christian Church; and the favourable impression made on non-Christians is always represented as due to this unity;1 and this quality of fellowship is brought into the closest connexion with the new life of every individual. Indeed, all informing pictures of the Christian fellowship agree in describing every individual as an integral constituent of the whole, and attributing everything to one spirit moving in, and animating, the whole.2 And if adherents of the twofold separatist tendency already frequently censured, the naturalistic and the fanatical or visionary, should wish to object that this properly holds good only of the first period of the Christian Church and is by no means essential to it, but must more and more die out, since every reason for thus holding together drops away when once the new life is firmly established and can perfect itself out of the common source in each individual by himself, they may be answered as follows.
In the first place, that which can cease or fall into the background through the gradual strengthening of individuals is only one element in one half of what our proposition affirms; it is only that element of the reciprocal influence which comes under the analogy3 of teaching and learning, or of imparting and receiving. For if anyone is properly taught of God he does not require someone else to teach him. This element in fellowship is also, in one particular respect, always on the way to cessation4—if, that is, one is always in contact with the same people. But as new persons are always arriving, this element in fellowship also runs on; those who were previously receivers now imparting, as givers, to later comers. And this mutual influence has a further element, namely, a reciprocity of impartation and comprehension among equals. This is based on the fact that, owing to varied personal idiosyncrasies, the new life itself is something different in every case; and everyone, just as he would fain take Christ wholly to himself, strives also to take to himself as far as possible all that Christ has effected; and thus again each is moved by Christ (as he personally conceives Him) to manifest the power of Christ working in him, which indeed is what happens in all the good works of the regenerate. Still less does the other element, the co-operative activity, ever tend to cease. On the contrary, it is bound to be facilitated and to expand in proportion as the new life gains strength in each. And obviously, in proportion as the will for the Kingdom of God originated simultaneously with living faith in Christ is more definitely formed within each and develops into a system of purposes, so will each necessarily appropriate the help of all kindred forces. And thus, through this interweaving of what is co-operative and what is reciprocal, and in virtue of the identity of the new life in all, there arises a disposition to a common work or undertaking—a work that can be carried forward approximatingly towards its goal only by means of the conjunction of every power and activity; a work which would by no means cease though the whole human race were received into the fellowship of redemption, because it ever remains as in itself an infinite and ever-changing exemplification of what is common in the individual and what is individual in the common. For this is the essential thing in the life of a people; and it is as a people, or a household of God,5 that Christians have always wished to be regarded.
In the second place, there are, it is true, in this regard two opposite kinds of human association: those which of themselves tend to come to an end, and within which therefore no increasing unity is striven for; and those which seek to persist, in which therefore the mitigation of differences must be an object, and unity must be held fast. The former are always merely accidental. Partly they are those which by their very nature can be given neither definite form nor definite limits, as in all associations within a free society, though even there under certain circumstances something like a common spirit comes to exist; partly they are those formed solely in connexion with some particular joint-undertaking without any inward unity of spirit, in such a way that each is left free to seek his own personal ends. It may be there are even religious fellowships approaching this in character; of the Christian fellowship it certainly does not hold true. For what each recognizes in the other is a common love to Christ; and this supplies a unifying principle that is uninterruptedly at work.