A Third-Century Sermon

One of my current interests is learning more about church history - the two-thousand-year period between the present and New Testament times.

I find it fascinating to read ideas from earlier eras, such as this excerpt of a third-century sermon by St. Cyprian, a wealthy lawyer who became a Christian in middle-age, and was martyred a few years later in 258 AD. His subject: church unity.

This is what he writes:

... Even as the sun has many rays, yet one light; and the tree many boughs, yet its strength is one, seated in the deep-lodged root; and as when many streams flow down from one source, though a multiplicity of waters seem to be diffused, unity is preserved in the source itself. Thus so, the Church, flooded with the light of the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world with yet one light which is spread upon all places.... She stretches forth her branches over the universal earth, in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad her bountiful and onward stream; yet there is one head, one source, one mother, abundant in the results of her fruitfulness.*

(Interesting that some issues - like this one - never go away!


*(Excerpt taken from The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hours from Sunset to Sunrise, p. 95)