Home and Foreign Missions, while, for Christ's sake, she is repairing her own wastes the most promptly.

The existence of a church, we must then conclude, contemplates positive institutions which may never be omitted; voluntary instrumentalities, which may be taken up and laid aside. at discretion; and particular churches may organize themselves into one more general church, for their own and the world's highest religious good, and then do the work that grows. out of, and belongs to, that organization, heartiest and earliest. The organization is little without the living spirit; but this living spirit also can do little in our world, without some organization; and it is of our Presbyterian organization, as the best body which our spirit can build up around itself, that I now proceed to say

II. That all its parts must work together according to the grand design of the whole.

We shall see the necessity for this harmonious co-operation in the light of all analogy. All the adaptations of complicated means to some end must have a law of movement permeating every part and turning all in one direction. One element working disorderly may ruin the whole. All must work, and all work together. Inaction may often be fatal as wrong action; and always, the inert portion is so much dead-weight, and the cumbrous burden had better be thrown down. In machinery, the moving power works through and drives every wheel in its determinate direction. In the ongoings of nature, every part is controlled by the universal law, and the atom as truly as the world must have its place and its work. The order of the seasons, and the alternations of day and night can be perpetuated only by such perpetual co-operation. And so with all social and moral systems. The authority which binds all in unity must go out in steady action and keep its constant restraint upon every member of the community, or the peace and prosperity of no nation or family could be secured. And thus also by the divine arrangements in the text, Joshua and every soldier, Moses, Aaron and Hur, and the Rod of God, all have each their place and each its appropriate function in securing the designed result. And such is the teaching of all analogy.

And now in the Church of God there is a special necessity for such conspiring action. Order and harmony, demanded in all joint efforts to an end, are here least of all to be dispensed with. God is dishonored by all jarring counsels, and discordant interests, and conflicting selfish or sectional actions; and the Holy Spirit withdraws from the divided enterprise, and the work comes to naught. The Church of God can have neither inaction nor counteraction without essential damage.

This necessity for harmonious co-operation appears also in the design of the Church itself. God meant in the Church to gather up his friends from the world; to give the truth a known body; to put his plan of saving souls at work, and make the Gospel salvation spread over the world. He meant by it to discipline Christians; to warn and invite sinners; and to secure Christian nurture and training for children. It is God's instituted means for gaining these revealed purposes, and the wisdom of the adaptation is as conspicuous as the designs in nature.

But the adaptation evinces God's intention that every portion should be doing its own work, and all acting together to attain the revealed end. As in the human body we know what every member means, and that the eye and ear, the hand and foot, can neither change their action, nor any one move in a deranged action without harming all; so in the organization of the Church, we know the meaning of each part and that there must be no schism. The ministry must be in its place, and at its work. The elders and deacons must know their places, and fulfil their calling. The membership must know their duties, and be promptly fulfilling them. The Church Session, the Presbytery, the Synod, the General Assembly, all have their place and their work; and the will of God manifestly is, that all should take their places and faithfully and completely do their work. All displacement, all derangement, all intermeddling, all inaction, God will some way rebuke and redress. He will not permit his own mystical body to suffer long, as by "a broken tooth, or a foot out of joint," but will chastise all perversion and redress all displacement.

The authority of God directly enjoins all to work, each in its place and for the common good. The Bible supposes that

Christians will occupy different spheres, and come under distinct responsibilities; and it makes the duty clear by direct commands, that each shall fulfil the duties of his own sphere for the sake of the great cause. Every man must do his own work, in his own place, that all may be most benefited and blessed. "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Eph. iv. 11, 12. "Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness." Rom. xii. 6-8.

The grand injunction on all is, to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and to "count all things but loss for the excellency of Christ Jesus." For Christ's sake, the whole Church must seek the spiritual welfare of all Christ's children. No man may "seek his own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved." "Every man must look not on his own things, but every man also upon the things of others." We must "endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." "None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself; whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

Every portion of God's Church is thus bound to act in concert for God, and for the common welfare. The Master who puts us all in our respective places has said to each one of us, "Occupy till I come." The talent committed to us, he will one day require of us, with usury. What we have done to one of the least of his brethren, he will count as done to himself.

III. Such harmony of co-operation will ensure success. The Church of God succeeds when she is making progress in the consummation of the design of her institution. If she

has not yet done all, and gained all, she is nevertheless succeeding just in proportion as she is progressing in the accomplishment of her objects. More victories must be gained; more enemies subdued; more converts secured; and she must grow in purity, prayerfulness, and peace, through all her professing members. All this will be gained where the organized Church is fulfilling the grand end of her mission. The proof for this is as follows:

1. There would else be an impeachment of the divine Wisdom. The Church is God's plan for attaining his revealed purposes of mercy to a lost world. Its exact adaptations disclose the manifold wisdom of the Designer. And yet the sure proof of the wisdom must come from the results. If, when working according to its divine intention, it is still making no progress towards its end, there must be a manifestation of the failure, and a consequent impeachment of the wisdom of the plan. Here is a very complicated and expensive instrumentality, working on according to the design of its organization, but it is gaining nothing; it is ineffectual in its own uses for its own end; the enemy triumphs notwithstanding. God has devised this plan, and committed himself to it, and called men and angels to look on and wonder at it, and here it is in full and harmonious working, but it does not succeed. All expectation is disappointed, and the supposed wisdom reveals itself to be foolishness.

From no quarter could there come so fatal an impeachment of the divine wisdom as on this point. Suppose the material system of worlds to fall into confusion, and the spheres to demolish each other under the laws of their own movements, and the results to throw back upon the great Architect the evidence of defects and mistakes in his universal geometry, still this would reflect small discredit to his skill, compared with a failure in his great work of Redemption. God's character is more sublimely committed here, than in any other work of his devising. Better heaven and earth pass away, than one jot from the great charter of Gospel salvation should fall out. Here is his revealed "intent, that now unto principalities, and powers in heavenly places, may be known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God;" and yet, while these heavenly principalities

and powers are looking on, the full working fails of accomplishing the end, and they all see it, and see God's counsels confounded in it, and his wisdom condemned by it; and from what other source could come an impeachment like this? Let Amalek triumph in face of a faithful Church, and you can nowhere else retrieve the honor of the divine wisdom.

2. A failure here would subvert the faith of the moral universe. God has already done that which has carried conviction to all moral beings, that his heart is fully set upon the great plan of Redemption. In his first promise to fallen man; in the call of Abraham; in the long instructions of the theocratic ritual to prepare the world for the Messiah's advent; in the Saviour's coming, and teaching, and atoning sacrifice; in the Gospel revelation, and the Church's institution, and her sacramental ordinances; a thousand voices testify God's intention, that the devil shall be bound, and the captive world reclaimed. Prophecy and public declaration have loudly told how fully God has set his purpose upon the establishment and extension of his kingdom in the world. His Church is his chosen means for effecting it, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The covenant is sealed in Jesus' blood. Nowhere else has God given such promises, such pledges, such solemn sanctions to the sincerity of his determinations, as in the covenant ratified with the Church and with Jesus Christ, its head. To Noah he said, "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease;" and then set his bow in the cloud as the perpetual pledge of his faithfulness; and yet what is this compared with the decree declared in heaven, "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee;" and to whom he emphatically announces, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." "He shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied,"-and at the crucifixion he rends the rocks, opens the graves, and darkens the sun; and then rising and ascending at the right hand, angels and principalities are made subject to him. God's honor is nowhere else so deeply committed; his feelings are nowhere else so strongly interested; preparations for nothing else have been made so costly, nor sacrifices for anything else so expensive; if this fail, no other rock is sure, no other foundation of