to whom he wrote were of one body in Christ. "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another."

Again; in 1 Cor. xii., we find the Apostle bids the Corinthians cultivate tender sympathy with one another, be kind and considerate, condescend to one another's infirmities, and honour those inferior to them even in spiritual attainments. And on what special ground does he urge all these upon them? On the one ground that all to whom he wrote were members of Christ; for he begins his exhortation with-" By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." He illustrates it by the mutual sympathy of the members of the human frame; and he concludes it with the words "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

A moment's consideration will serve to convince the reader that, if he is to apply to himself this particular instruction in righteousness, and endeavour to act upon it in his intercourse with his fellow-Christians, this can only be by sincerely believing that he himself, and the baptized Christians by whom he is surrounded, have been grafted into this one body.

To whatever extent he looks upon the Baptism of the majority of those with whom his lot is cast to have been a mere ceremony, in which the Holy Spirit did not really baptize them into Christ's body, just to that extent will he be unable to realize practically the Apostle's motive to Christian sympathy.

I do not, of course, mean to assert that this is the only Scripture motive for the cultivation and exercise of these graces. I do not doubt but that the love of his Saviour constrains many a Christian to exercise them, who, through defective religious teaching or prejudice, does not realize the doctrine of the Church being the body of Christ; still we have here the Apostle urging a particular motive, over and above every other. And it is impossible to imagine

that the Holy Spirit should have directed Apostles to urge any one motive, to any virtue or grace whatsoever, which may be safely dispensed with, because others appear in the eye of man more efficacious.

But again, (and I would invite the reader's most earnest attention to this last instance that I shall give,) the Holy Spirit urges upon Christians purity of body and soul, by reminding them that their very bodies are the members of Christ. "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid " (1 Cor. vi. 15). You observe he does not here say that sins of impurity are to be avoided because of their inconsistency with a profession of Christianity. Neither does he bid men shun such sins because of the degradation into which they sink both body and soul, and the wrath of God they will eventually draw down on the sinner.

But the Holy Spirit would have Christians abhor sins of impurity and lust because they have been grafted into Christ's body. (1 Cor. vi.) And again,-"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.)

It appears to me utterly impossible for any one, who does not believe that the baptized Body have at their Baptism been really grafted into Christ, to urge this Scripture motive to holiness upon them.

Let us take the case of a minister, or teacher, or parent, believing that unless a young person showed manifest signs of real conversion, he was on no account to be considered to have been regenerate and grafted into Christ's body in Baptism. Such a one would naturally think that the commission of such a sin as fornication was the surest possible sign that the person in question was in no sense, and never had been, a member of Christ; and so he would

hold such a mode of warning Christian people of the awful evil of such sins to be either an useless or dangerous one. It would be useless if the person to be warned had ever been really regenerate; for then higher motives, such as those arising from a sense of justification, would keep him in an atmosphere far above the reach of such evil influences and if he had never been (in the view of his instructor) regenerated, such an appeal would be dangerous; for it would lead him to imagine he once had been grafted into Christ when he never had.

But supposing the young person's Baptism had been to him what St. Paul presumes it to be in all cases, (Rom. vi. 3, 4; Gal. iii. 27; 1 Cor. vi. 15; xii. 13, 27,) a real engrafting into Christ's body, what an awful responsibility upon those who do not warn men against sins, so fearfully prevalent, by bringing before them the full iniquity of such sins! The full iniquity of sins of impurity are, that they defile Christ's body,-those members which are His, not ours; and none can urge this consideration on Christians in danger of such sins, unless they believe that such Christians have been in very deed made partakers of the grace which Baptism was instituted to convey.

When one thinks of the devastation that these forms of iniquity are working among baptized Christians, how can ministers of Christ be free from men's blood, if such warnings do not form a part of their public teaching to their baptized flocks? And how can parents answer for their children's souls, unless they teach them (as the Church directs them in her Catechism) that they are members of Christ, and so that their very bodies are to be reverenced and held sacred as in union with His ?

But they are fearful lest baptized men should think they are members of Christ when they are not. Had St. Paul any such fear? His fear is, not that they should think that they are members of Christ when they are not, but lest they should fail to realize it when they all are.

"Still," Unbelief will rejoin, " may not this Church be a

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THE SECOND ADAM, AND THE NEW BIRTH.

natural society, and this wondrous way of speaking of it oriental and figurative?" This cannot be, for the Apostle says, "We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Eph. v. 30); and, as if to show that they who would empty his words of all supernatural import, do it at their own peril, he adds, "This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."

Reader, does it seem too great a thing that men on earth should partake of a gift so awful? Consider, I beseech you, that Christian dispensation in which you are now living, how it began, how it is carried on, how it will terminate. It began with no less a miracle than the incarnation; "the Word was made flesh;" it is carried on by One in your nature on the throne of the heaven of heavens; and at its close all men will rise again in their bodies.

You hold these things, and you believe in original sin and the mystery of its transmission from the first Adam. You know not, then, what part of your probation it may be to submit your whole inner man to the doctrine of the Second Adam, and of the means that He has consecrated for making His brethren one with Himself. In such a dispensation of grace is it for us to say, "How can these things be?" Is it not rather for us to say, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief”?

THE END.

R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.