Christ is to be of the communion of the saints:* and to set up any other pretensions, to speak of any other qualifications, is the only heresy.† I need not point out how healing would be the application of these catholic principles to our own times and our own hearts. How unavailingly has Paul written and preached! His writings are turned against himself;- his purposes frustrated by perversions of his own words. He is quoted in support of principles which he would have deemed destructive of the universality of the Gospel, — for he knew but of one Gospel, the union of the soul with God through the love of Christ. How can men read this chapter, and break the Christian unity by demanding other terms of Church-fellowship than some love and reverence in each heart for one common Lord,some reflections on each spirit from him, the image of God! But we must be willing to include those in the Church Universal who would exclude us. In whatever soul we see breathings of the goodness of God, of the love of Christ, we must recognize the closest bond of Christian brotherhood, and see one of the spiritual family of the invisible Father, of the Church of God in heaven; for there can be no eternal separation between souls that love a common master, that revere a common image of the Father of spirits, - and whose desires, affections, and moral longings are the same. * "In the strictest sense of essential, this alone is essential in Christianity, that the same spirit should be growing in us, which was in the fulness of all perfection in Christ Jesus." - Coleridge. † "Schism and Separation." SECTION II. DISSENSIONS FROM SPECULATIVE SOURCES. UNITY CANNOT BE BROKEN IN THINGS THAT ARE ONLY SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED, WITH WHICH THE SPECULATIVE FACULTIES ARE NOT VITALLY CONCERNED. CHAP. II. 1-16. 1 So I, brethren, when I came to you, came not in the prominency of speech [Argument] or wisdom, declar2 ing unto you the testimony of God. For I determined. not to regard any thing among you, except Jesus Christ, 3 even him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, 4 and in fear, and in much trembling. And my doctrine, and my preaching, was not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power; 5 that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. 6 Yet we speak wisdom in the estimation of those who are perfect, but not the wisdom of this world nor 7 of the rulers of this world, that come to naught: but we speak the wisdom of God in his mystery, that hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages 8 unto our glory; which none of the rulers of this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have 9 crucified the Lord of Glory, but, as it is written, - 66 - Eye did not see, and ear did not hear, neither entered into the heart of man, the things which God prepared for 10 them that love Him. "* But God has revealed them to us through his † spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all 11 things, even the deeps of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save 12 the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is of God, that we might know the things that have been graciously given to us by 13 God which things we publish, not in words [discourse] taught by human wisdom, but in words [discourse] taught by the spirit, explaining the spiritual by the spiritual.‡ 14 But the animal man receiveth not the things of the : spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because spiritually are they dis15 cerned. But he who is spiritual discerneth all things, yet himself is discerned by no one. For," Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct 16 Him?" || But we have the mind of Christ. WHAT is Christianity? It is a practical power, a living energy, for the purpose of drawing the soul of man into connection with the spirit of God. And this it does, by awakening the spiritual affections of the mind through the impulse of sympathy with that heavenly model of humanity, who exhibited all the mixed elements of our nature in a state of harmony with the will of God. Whenever it is the medium of this divine attraction, whenever it brings * Isaiah lxiv. 4. † Or more probably, "through the spirit."- Griesbach. Or, "to those who are spiritual." || Isaiah xl. 13, 14. a soul into practical communion with the fountain of love and holiness, Christianity has accomplished its highest object; it has drawn a new member into the Church of God, a new subject into the kingdom of Heaven. And if it has really connected a soul with God, it matters not what was the particular feature of the full and perfect Christ that found a point of sympathy in the human heart, through which it was enabled to introduce itself into the affections, and imprint a divine image on the moral nature. Christ is a mediator between man and God, when, by some feeling of union with himself, some recognition communicated from him of that Heavenly Father of whom he is the image, he leads any heart, through this excitement of its spiritual nature, to unite itself in its inward life to the Father of spirits. This attraction to God through the power of his Christ is the essential spirit of Christianity, what St. Paul calls "the energy of God in the Gospel." Christianity is an instrument for effecting this purpose. Christ is the means that the wisdom of God, and the power of God, devised for this end. The infinite Father, removed by their sins, and outward superstitions, and speculative philosophies, from all spiritual communion with the hearts of his children, prepared a practical method for reuniting with himself these broken bonds of the human soul. He manifested himself in Christ, - he showed in his Son the image of his own love and holiness, that all his other children, drawn by * *Rom. i. 16. this living appeal to that divine spirit which is in us all, might recognize in Christ the perfection of their nature, and through him be led upwards to the common source of goodness, to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God: "This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." All those whom this love of Christ led to the love of God were the partakers of a common spirit;—a divine principle of life operated within their souls, in virtue of which they were the Church Universal-the family of the Heavenly Father, - the branches in connection with the living vine, the body of Christ. There are but two ways, not ways of sin, in which this Christian unity can be broken. This inward communication of the heart with God, through the spiritual attraction of Christ, may be represented as so intimately connected with certain outward forms of devotion, or with certain systems of thought, that independently of them it can have no effective existence. The inward reality, the state of the affections in regard to God and Christ, may be represented as absolutely dependent on the outward methods which certain men have found effectual in their own cases, or through some intellectual peculiarities have imagined to be necessary. This is to violate the unity of the Christian spirit, this is, in the language of St. Paul, "to preach another Gospel," to set aside as insufficient God's instrument of salvation. God has set forth his Christ as the means of drawing souls to himself, through moral sympathy with his Image; and all who are so at |