organization of the Kingdom of Christ in the world, the community of those who are pledged to his service, however ill they do it, and made his disciples, however imperfectly they learn.

The Church thus organized is likened by St. Paul to a body. Christ is the Head, directing all the members, and, according to St. Paul's conception of anatomy, providing them with life and nourishment. It is therefore called the mystical Body of Christ. The figure answers in part to that of the vine or the olive tree, but St. Paul employs it chiefly for the purpose of insisting on the oneness of the Body, and the due subordination of the members in their several offices. Once more the Church is described as an ordered society.1

It is a visible society, the members of which may be known and mutually recognized as brethren. The word Ecclesia itself implies so much; the use of it in the New Testament is unintelligible on any other understanding. Calvinists, in pursuance of their doctrine of absolute decrees of election and reprobation, are compelled to distinguish from the visible Church an invisible Church, consisting of all those and only those who are elect to eternal life. Others with less excuse have followed their example, taking the invisible Church to mean those who are known by God, the reader of hearts, to be persevering in the way of salvation. No such distinction is found in the teaching of Holy Scripture. An expression has become current of late years which covers part of the same ground. Certain men are said to belong to the soul of the Church, though not to the body. It is a fanciful description, adopted by some who, accepting a narrow definition of the Church, have to face the consequent

1 Rom. xii. 4, 5; I Cor. xii. 12-27; Eph. iv. 4-16; Col. ii. 17-19.

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exclusion of many whom they are fain to include. But the Church is an organized society, of which men either are members or are not; there is no third term. If the figure of the Body be pressed, we must say that as the living soul gathers and incorporates matter into the body, so the Holy Spirit-the One Spirit that goes with the One Body-incorporates individual men into the Body of Christ. In this sense we must read the well-known maxim: Ubi Spiritus ibi Ecclesia.

The Christian society includes all who have received, by whatever means, the grace of regeneration. That expulsion from the society awaits those who abuse the privileges of membership we are plainly taught. The branch of the vine that bears no fruit is cut away. But the time of such expulsion remains in doubt. Disciplinary excommunication by the rules of the Church on earth does not entirely sever the delinquent from the society of the faithful. Neither does apostasy have this effect, for the apostate may be restored by penitence. These diseased members, so to speak, are not cut off from the life of the body, however little it may circulate in them. They are not deprived of all Christian fellowship, although for reasons of discipline its outward manifestation be withheld from them. The mutual service which members of the Christian society owe to each other is not entirely denied them; in particular, they have a share in the prayers of the Church, and their restoration is hoped for and sought by the power of these prayers.

More doubtful is the condition of those who have gone to their death impenitent. That the possibility of 1 The term Invisible Church was derived from the scholastic theologians, who meant by it however the souls of the departed in Purgatory or in Paradise, as being invisible to us on earth.

repentance ceases with death is taught as certain truth. Repentance means the resolute turning of the will away from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and the disembodied soul, whatever its faculties, being severed by force from the world and the flesh can no longer freely renounce them. But whether impenitence in death actually cuts off the soul from further connection with the Church, or leaves entire severance to follow upon the final judgment, is not clearly revealed. The practice of the Church excludes those who are reckoned to have died impenitent from any further share in the offices of the faithful. Of secret impenitence indeed the Church is no judge, and the most hopeful view is taken of the departed; but death in open defiance or apostasy is treated as ground for exclusion. Those who die excommunicate, or who by reason of self-murder are judged to have shut upon themselves the door of penitence, are denied even the funeral rites of the body.

All others are regarded in death as still members of the Church. They are sustained by the prayers of the faithful in the fiery trial through which they have to pass; and the continual supply of abounding grace comes to them, as to the living, through the perpetual intercession of the members of Christ one for the other. It is sometimes objected that no express mention is made in the New Testament of prayer for the departed, but there is no need for specifying them as objects of prayer. They are obviously included in the supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings to be made for all men, and in particular for all the saints.1

1 Eph. vi. 18; 1 Tim. ii. I. I do not think St. Paul's prayer for Onesiphorus (2 Tim. i. 18) can be pressed, as there is no certain evidence that he was then departed. Neither can the baptism for

And equally do the departed souls themselves help in this work of intercession. In the words of a Russian theologian, "All the members of the Church, both living and departed, are being perfected incessantly by mutual prayer." 1

In the cult of the departed the Christian Church has taken over many things from natural religion, which have not been winnowed wholly free from superstition. With these we are not concerned, but only with the underlying truth on which they rest, the intercommunion of all saints in prayer and worship. The practice of the Church has developed on two separate lines. In the East, prayer is made in the Liturgy for all the departed alike, including even the Apostles and the Holy Mother of God herself; and in like manner the intercessions of all, but chiefly of the more glorious saints, are sought by the faithful. In the West, there is a distinction made between two classes of the departed. For the one class prayers are offered by the Church. In the other class are the perfect and glorified saints, the aid of whose intercession is invoked. The distinction is connected with the specific opinions about purgatory which have prevailed in Western Christendom. In England, by reaction from superstition, the cult of the departed has been altogether obscured, and belief in the whole Church, the communion of all saints living and departed, has been consequently weakened.

the dead, spoken of in 1 Cor. xv. 29, be safely adduced, in view of our entire ignorance of the practice actually referred to.

1 Khomiakoff, in Birkbeck's Russia and the English Church, vol. i. p. 217.

SECT. II.-The Characteristics of the Church

We profess in the Creeds our belief in One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. These four terms are known as the notes or characteristic marks of the Church. We may consider them in three aspects; they show us how the Church is to be regarded essentially, ideally, and practically.

The Church is One. There is numerically but one Church. It was announced by the Lord in the singular: "Upon this rock I will build my Church." It is spoken of as the Church of Christ, the Church of God, and therefore is one, as there is one God, one Christ. St. Paul describes it, in terms excluding all possibility of multiplication, as the Body of Christ, the fulness of him. that filleth all in all. As there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, as there is one hope of our calling and one Spirit, so there is one Body. By the unity of the Church we mean much more than numerical oneness or singularity, but here is the startingpoint. From this we may go on to understand how the Church can be spoken of in plurality and yet remain one.1

The Church is to be not only one by nature, but also held together in moral unity. The moral unity of a society differs from the natural by the fact that it can be disturbed without the actual destruction of the society. A state which splits into several independent states is destroyed altogether: ceasing to be one, it ceases to exist: if the several states which have replaced it should afterwards come together in federal union, a new united state is created; the old is not

1 Matt. xvi. 18; Eph. i. 23; iv. 4-6.