All sin against the Holy Ghost, every breach of the law of holiness and every defect in spiritual-mindedness tend to the marring and dividing of the body of Christ. All pride, bigotry and exclusive Churchism; all claim that the true Church is essentially identical with a certain external organization or form of organization or with a definite external succession of officers; all denial of the validity of the ministry and sacraments of any bodies professing the true faith and bearing evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit, are schisms. All party spirit, jealousy and selfish rivalry; all unnecessary multiplication of denominational organizations; all want of the spirit of fraternal love and co-operation in the service of the common Master,-tend to the marring and dividing of the body of Christ.

If this be true, it is evident that the real union of the churches can best be cultivated by promoting the central spiritual unity of the Church which comprehends them all. For this end all who call themselves Christians must with one purpose seek to bring their whole mind and thought more and more into perfect conformity to the Word of God speaking through the sacred Scriptures, and their whole life and activity more and more into subjection to the Holy Ghost dwelling in the whole body and in all its members alike. This process must, of course, proceed entirely from within outward, never in the reverse direction. Organic unity will be the result of the co-operation through long ages of an infinite variety of forces. It cannot be brought about by any system of means working toward it directly as an end in itself. All such unionistic enterprises are prompted by many mixed motives, some of them essentially partisan,

and therefore wholly divisive in their real effects. But hereafter, in God's good time, the result will come as an incidental effect of the ripening of all churches in knowledge and love and in all the graces, and especially of a whole-souled, self-forgetful consecration of all to the service and glory of their common Lord.

VI. The "CITY OF GOD."

The most sublime picture presented in the entire past history of the Christian Church since Pentecost is that presented by St. Augustine, the grandest of all uninspired Church teachers, when during the years A. D. 413 to 426, from the very midst of the conflagration of ancient Rome, the so-called "eternal city" of the pagans, he uttered in trumpet tones his argument and prophecy of the superior strength and beauty, and of the absolutely immortal life and glory, of the city of God in his De Civitate Dei. The Teutonic barbarians had already taken Rome and shaken to its foundations the ancient universal empire, upon which civilization and order and the hopes of mankind appeared to depend. The minds of men were in a state of chaotic confusion. The future was utterly dark. Even Christians began to despair. Then Augustine made all men see the difference between the "city of the world," called eternal, which was passing away, and the pure and rainbowed city of God," the goal of contest, but the realm of peace and love, which shall abide secure and radiant, like the incorruptible stars, for ever and ever.

A city differs from a kingdom only in being its condensed essence, its central seat. What Paris is to France, what the city of Rome was to the empire of the same name, suggests the use of the title "city of God" for

the consummate and glorified form of the kingdom. It is the kingdom comprised in its absolute unity, raised to its highest condition of culture, refinement, wealth and power.

Isaiah saw the "city of God" (Isa. 60: 10-22) when he said, "The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee. . . . Therefore thy gates shall be open continually, they shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought." "The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about and see: all they gather themselves together the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." The author of Hebrews saw that "city of God" when he said (Heb. 12: 22 seq.): "Ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”

And the apocalyptic prophet closes the volume of divine disclosures with the prophetic picture of the kingdom consummated in the form of this "city of God" descending from heaven: "And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will

:

dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." For the city "has the glory of God and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. . . . And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. . . . And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.

...

Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

LECTURE XIV.

THE LAW OF THE KINGDOM.

WE have seen that the great end in which all the providential activities of God culminate in this world is the establishment of a universal kingdom of righteousness, which is to embrace all men and angels and to endure for ever in absolute perfection and blessedness. This kingdom, viewed as a reign, must be administered by law, and, viewed as a realm, must be brought into perfect subjection to law in all its elements. This law can be nothing lower than the law of absolute and immutable moral perfection, which, having its seat in the moral nature of God, embraces the whole moral universe in its sway.

This divine institution under its title of "Church" is too habitually regarded as simply the sphere of a divine redemption. The member of the Church is looked upon as a beneficiary unconditionally delivered from condemnation, whose happiness is rendered infallibly secure for ever. But the essential idea of the kingdom is a community of men in communion with God, whose whole nature and life are dominated by the law of righteousness, where every individual is holy as our Father in heaven is holy, and where all spontaneously perform to perfection all the duties which grow out of their several relations.