IV - AT THE CONSECRATION OF BISHOP WESTCOTT

Summary

EPHESIANS iv. 12, 13

For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ; till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

These words are spoken to us out of the past, a past which is in one sense becoming ever more remote. Already the nineteenth of the centuries which are reckoned from the coming of Christ our Lord is drawing perceptibly near to its end. The long interval which actually separates us from the Apostolic age grows unremittingly longer; while the sense of distance gains steadily in force with the knowledge that the human race, within and without Christendom, is setting forth on new and untrodden ways.

Yet this remoteness of time and of circumstance is swallowed up in a greater nearness. It is hardly too bold to say that through all these centuries no generation of Christians has had the Apostolic writings so nigh to them as our own. That instinctive turning to the primary deposit of Christian truth, which has often been noticed as an accompaniment of times of religious convulsion and perplexity, could hardly fail to be called forth to an unwonted degree by these later days. Other influences have been at work in the same direction with perhaps equal power. The study of the New Testament by professed students has been pursued for many years with increased carefulness, circumspection, and regard for evidence.