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The true Broad Church is that in which an enlarged obedience to God's commandments is brought about by an enlarged experience of His love; and His commandments and His love are both of them exceeding broad. True spiritual life will widen the soul in its possessions, its perceptions, its will, and its love; it will extend our powers of having, of knowing, of willing, and of loving; and, in one or other of these four, most of our life is included.

1. How very little we possess, both in outward and inward things. Our hands are small and the world is large. "Tell me how I can make my broad acres more broad," is the request of the rich man. "Tell me how I can make my narrow holding less narrow," is the cry of the poor. But a life in God makes us rich, for "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos," etc. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth."

2. How trifling is our knowledge. We know but little of things in this world, with all our sciences and study, and we know much less about God, and glory, and immortality, and the spirits which live outside the tent of this mortal flesh, or of any of those things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." But we believe that for those whom God enlarges, there is an unspeakable increase in the perceptive powers of the soul; they are taught things that are hidden from the wise and prudent. There is knowledge for the simple and lowly ones; for those who, in the spiritual strength they have derived from God, run in the way of His commandments. Looking into the Father's face, and into the Saviour's heart, the soul can say (John 17:3). And with the knowledge there comes the aspiration (Ephesians 3:17).

3. How little is our will-power. We often want to do right, and the force of habits or of grooves is too strong for us. We have not enough momentum to carry us out or enough moral force to deny the past and to assert the future. The only remedy is the Divine enlargement of heart which comes from the visitation of the Spirit. We carry our brokenness to God; we put our helpless will at His feet, and He energizes it, and sends us back from the altar-steps able to say, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God."

4. How small is our capacity for forgiving. Only those who have the Spirit within them, energizing them, can truly love at all. Again, we fall at the Lord's feet, and tell Him we have no power even to be civil to some people, much less to love them; scarcely power to put up the weapons of revenge against some; and even to those whom, like the publicans and Pharisees and sinners, we love because they love us, we have not been able to make an adequate return for the low they have lavished upon us. Then God teaches us that there lies in Him the power of enlarging the human affections, and He enlarges our hearts that we, "being rooted and grounded in love," — not only in the experimental realization of His love to us, but also in the experimental living out of our love to Him, and to all that He has made and given us, — are able to "run the way of His commandments." For that is His new commandment, "that we love one another."

(J. Rendel Harris.)

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KJV: I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.

WEB: I run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free. HEY