upon the mere hypothesis of it,) that the outward and visible sign was in this case at least unnecessary; but he "answered, "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?' and he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord." May the obedience of St. Peter's faith be an example to us all, from our hearts to "go and do likewise!"

a Acts x. 47, 48.

CHAPTER V.

Membership of the Church a Covenant State.

66 WHAT HAST THOU TO DO TO DECLARE MY STATUTES, OR THAT THOU SHOULDEST TAKE MY COVENANT IN THY MOUTH? SEEING THOU HATEST INSTRUCTION, AND CASTEST MY WORDS

BEHIND THEE."-Ps. 1. 16, 17.

46 BRETHREN, I SPEAK AFTER THE MANNER OF MEN; THOUGH IT BE BUT A MAN'S COVENANT, YET IF IT BE CONFIRMED, NO MAN DISANNULLETH, OR ADDETH THERETO."-Gal. iii. 15.

Ir has been shown that, forasmuch as the building up of a church for his own glory is the ultimate end of the religion revealed by God in the Gospel, a right understanding and an effectual reception of that religion is possible only in connexion with the body of the church; and it has moreover been shown that the influence of the Holy Spirit, on which a right understanding and effectual reception of Gospel truth is equally dependant, is connected by God's appointment with certain outward and visible signs, which, together with the Spirit, constitute the witnesses of the past dispensations of God, and of his continued effectual presence upon earth. Our in

quiry must now proceed one step further, with a view to ascertain whether the building up of the church be a purely spiritual and secret operation, appertaining exclusively to the invisible world, or whether it have pleased God to rear up the edifice which he has chosen for the habitation of his glory, openly and visibly in the sight of men. The obvious answer to this question seems to be, that if the influence of the Holy Spirit, which is the vital breath of the body the church, though in its own essence of a purely spiritual nature, have, in condescension to human infirmity, been embodied in certain outward signs and pledges, the body itself of the church, consisting as it does of beings who of their very nature belong to the visible world, can hardly be conceived to be otherwise than a visible body. If the essentially invisible has given visible evidence of himself and of his presence, does it not seem inconsistent with the general scope of his proceedings, that the essentially visible, the members of his church, should in this their capacity have no visible, but only an invisible existence? The supposition is, on the very face of it, a paradox, which nothing short of an inextricable dilemma could have brought men to invent and adopt. And, in truth, so we find it: the notion that there is no visible church of God to be identified

upon earth, that the church is an invisible body which in the abstract is to be found here, and there, and everywhere, but in concrete reality nowhere, is notoriously the offspring of a spirit of unsoundness and of compromise. When the imperative necessity of reformation which was conscientiously felt on one side, and the deliberate resistance to it which was pertinaciously maintained on the other, had successfully rent the church Catholic, it was then that the division of her co-ordinate branches afforded a plausible plea to restless and heretically disposed minds to strike at the root of all subordination: but it was not until the sense of subordination had been systematically banished, as by a general infection, from the public mind, when certain results of doctrine and of practice, rather than principles, came to be made the touchstone of Christianity; when the attitude which men assumed, rather than the foundation on which they stood, decided the estimation in which they should be held; it was then, and not till then, that, driven to the alternative of unchristianizing the schismatic portions of the great body of professing Christians, or abandoning altogether the principle of churchunion as an essential principle of Christianity, men bethought themselves of the sorry expedient of representing church-union as a mere

abstraction, to which we must not expect to find a corresponding reality in this world. Thus it came to pass, that a certain standard of "orthodoxy" in doctrine, and "consistency" in practice, was substituted for the original foundation on which the church had been built from the beginning; whoever came up to that standard, was regarded as belonging to the invisible church, and the idea of a visible church was discarded altogether, as one of the obsolete notions of the dark and illiberal ages.

To revert from such a state of feeling back again to the original position, which ought never to have been departed from, is by no means an easy task. Not only must opinions and feelings long cherished be laid aside; but we must be prepared to find the stern, unbending truth, when propounded, denounced as an odious prejudice; to have our honest zeal for the church of God, and the salvation of souls through her, condemned under the name of bigotry and uncharitableness. The difficulty, however, of the task does not render it less obligatory, any more than the number and the plausible character of those that have fallen into error and sin, can ever convert their error into truth, or their sin into righteousness. Let not, then, such questions be asked as the following: "What! shall we refuse the name