tive. Doubtless it were so, if His body were a human body alone; but because He is Divine also, it has likewise that other medium of communication which does not depend upon local contiguity, but upon spiritual power. Even the sun, because its influence is more wide than its actual limits, while it is at rest in its place in the sky, is present upon earth by the effluence of its beams. But that Sacred Manhood which was created for the service of the Mediator between God and men, in which were stored up the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' that from it 'grace and truth' might flow forth into the whole race of man, has a real medium of presence through the Deity which is joined to it: so that it can be in all places and with all persons-not figuratively, but in truthnot by material contact, but by spiritual power. And while its material place is among the armies of heaven, its spiritual presence is among the inhabitants of the earth, when, how, and wheresoeyer is pleasing to its own gracious will."-P. 221-222.

The Mediation of Christ, then, is not something past and gone, nor yet something that lies wholly beyond the actual order of the world, with which we are to communicate only in the way of memory or thought; it lives always, with perennial force, in the actual Presence of Christ's Manhood in the world. This thought reigns throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews. His one sacrifice is once for all, not as a transient event, but as an ever during fact in the power of his indissoluble Mediatorial life. His intercession is going forward now in real union with the daily course of the world, as truly as the sun enters into the same econoniy from day to day. "Our Lord's acts of Mediation towards men, as well as his Intercession with the Father, are a present fact in the world of life, and not a mere fictitious representation. To be accounted the bond of union between different natures is to discharge the part of a Mediator; to be their real bond of union is to be one. Christ did not undertake this office as a legal fiction; he is the 'One Mediator,' because in him Godhead and Manhood were really united. And if he has still the same character, it must be in fact and not in name -Godhead and Manhood must still be connected by his actual intervention. While he is one by nature with the Everlasting Father, he must be one also by grace with those inferior members to whom he has vouchsafed to become Head, that he might be the Saviour of the body.' For the gifts of grace do not become less necessary through the lapse of ages: every generation of Adam's children has equal need of that external principle of supernatural renewal, which flows from the humanity of the Son of God into his brethren. The acts of his human, must

continue therefore as certainly as those of his Divine nature, and consequently that Presence of his manhood, whereby we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.'-If Christ be still Mediator, there must be the perpetual presence among us of his man's nature, whereby he who is one with the Father becomes one also with his brethren."-P. 238-239. To separate the action of Christ in the world now from his man's nature, and to refer it only to his Divinity, is just to say that he no longer acts as a man at all, in other words is no longer really man, as in the days of humiliation. "And what then must be thought of that body which suffered on the Cross, but that either it was a created substance, invested by God's mercy with more than mortal power and goodness, that it might accomplish that sacrifice which was needed for mankind-which is the Arian hypothesis; or else that the Father of all displayed himself in man's form by a transient and occasional manifestation, and (that work being over) has again retreated into the abyss of his unaproachable Godhead"-which is the more subtle heresy of Sabellius. The Incarnation cannot be held as real, if the being and working of the Mediator in the world be not apprehended as the presence in it still of the living power of his true Human Life. This should be plain to all.

VI. Christ's Presence in the world is in and by his mystical body, the Church. As a real human presence, carrying in itself the power of a new life for the race in general, it is no abstraction or object of thought merely, but a glorious living Reality, continuously at work, in an organic and historical way, in the world's constitution. Christ communicates himself to his people, and lives in them, not by isolated favor in each case, but collectively. His relation is at once to the whole family of the redeemed, and single christians accordingly have part in him only as they are comprehended at the same time in this whole. To be in Christ, is to be a member also necessarily of his mystical body, as dependence on a natural centre implies comprehension in the universal orb or sphere holding in the same relation. This is the idea of the Church. It comes from within and not from without. It grows out of the mystery of the Incarnation, apprehended as an abiding fact, and comes before us in the Creed accordingly, not as a notion or speculation merely, but as an article of faith. So too it has its attributes from itself and not from abroad. It is by an a priori necessity, it claims to be one, holy, and catholic. To deny or question this necessity is at once a heresy, which strikes in the end at the very foundation of Christianity itself. "That the Church is one body results

from organization, not from enactment," much less from human policy and agreement. "Neither is the profession of the Church's unity the mere admission of an external appearance, but the belief of an inward verity;" facts may or may not accord with it at any given time, but it still remains unalterably certain in its own nature, until Christianity itself be found to be false. Christ's one mediation, as related to men and reaching them through his glorified humanity, always present for this purpose in the world by the Spirit, is carried forward through the intervention of the Church, his Body Mystical, the fulness of what he is otherwise by distinction only in its single members. The Church, in this view, does indeed stand between Christ and the believer, but, only as the body of a living man is between one of his limbs and the living soul by which it is quickened and moved.

VII. The idea of the Church, as thus standing between Christ and single christians, implies of necessity visible organization, common worship, a regular public ministry and ritual, and to crown all especially grace-bearing sacraments. To question this, is to give up to the same extent the sense of Christ's Mediation as a perennial fact, now and always taking effect upon the economy of the world through the Church as his mystical body. Let it be felt that the Incarnation is a mystery not simply past, and not simply beyond the world, but at this time in full force for the world, carrying in itself the whole value of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection as an undying "ONCE FOR ALL"-the true conception of the Mediatorial Supremacy, as the real headship of Christ's manhood over all in behalf of the Church and for its salvation; let it be felt, at the same time, that this mystery touches men in and by the Church, which itself is made to challenge their faith for this reason as something supernatural and divine; and it becomes at once impossible to resist the feeling, that the "powers of the world to come" are actually at hand in its functions and services, with the same objective reality that attaches to the powers of nature under their own form and in their own place. To see no more in the ministry and offices of the Church, in this view, than a power of mere outward decla ration and testimony, such as we might have in any secular school, betrays a rationalistic habit of mind, which only needs to be set free from the indolence of uninquiring tradition, that it may be led to deny altogether that Christ has ever or at all come in the flesh.

It sounds well, and falls in well too with natural reason and popular sense, to magnify what is called spiritual religion as compared with a religion of outward ordinances and forms, and

to make Christianity turn on individual exercises transacted directly with God, in the sanctuary of the mind, aside from all regard to sacramental or other intervening media. But it ought to be borne in mind, that Christianity is not mere nature, and that to throw ourselves here on simply natural conceptions and impulses is in truth to substitute for it another theory of religion altogether. It comes to us as a system of redemption and salvation by a Mediator. It is throughout a mediatorial economy. The grace it reveals, is offered in Christ, not from a different quarter. It is offered in Christ again as Man; by the intervention of his flesh; through the door of his humanity, in the most real and true way. Under this form it is not something to be thought of merely, with however much devotion, on the part of the believ er; the case calls for an actual participation in its life and power. Christianity is so constituted accordingly as to be dependent always on means, which have for their object this union and communion in a real way. Salvation in these circumstances is still a personal and inward or spiritual interest; mere relations and forms save no man; but it is made to hang on the medium of a special economy in the Church as the mystical body of Christ, serving to bind the subject in living union with his natural flesh or humanity; which is embraced and rested upon by faith accordingly for this purpose. Not to acknowledge this, but to insist on having access to God independently of any such special economy, by virtue simply of the relation in which all souls stand to him as the "Father of the spirits of all flesh," is not Christianity but Rationalism under the christian name.

"To assert the truth of Christ's presence. the reality of that union which binds the whole mystic body of His Church to the manhood of the Incarnate Word-is to maintain the reality of His Mediation, and the absolute necessity of that bond by which heaven and earth are united. For it is a necessary result of the cardinal truth of the Christian system-the truth, i. e., that all gifts and blessings are introduced into our race through the intervention of that nobler member, who connects it with the Almighty. And herein is the Christian scheme of Mediation opposed to that theory of Rationalism, which rests upon the capacities of nature. The principle of Rationalism is, that man's improvement may be effected through those gifts which God bestowed upon him by creation, inasmuch as sufficient means of intercourse with the Supreme Spirit were provided by the law of his nature. Whereas the Church deals with man as a fallen race, whose original means of intercourse with God have been obstructed, and which needs a new and supernatural channel for the entrance of heavenly gifts. And this chan

nel has been provided through the Man Jesus Christ. In His person did Godhead enter manhood, that through this one perfect type of humanity, it might leaven the whole lump.' Thus does the law of grace supersede the law of nature. If man had never fallen, to inherit the nature of the first Adam had been a sufficient means of communion with God. But because the natural means of communication have been cut off, that supernatural union is requisite which we obtain by participating the nature of the second Adam. Now, it is for the diffusion of this renewed and renewing manhood, that those media have been provided, whereby the Son of Man communicates Himself to His brethren. All the ordinances of the Church, its hallowed things, places, and persons-its worship and sacraments-are a series of instruments whereby the sanctified manhood of the Mediator diffuses itself as a life-giving seed through the mass of humanity. Thus does He continue to effect that work through His man's nature, which He avowed to be the very object of His earthly being: For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be santified through the truth.' And for this office are external media as requisite, as were body and limbs to the truth of His human being. As He could not be a man without that substantial existence which revealed Him to the senses of mankind, so He could not be the Head of the Body Mystical, without the use of those actual media of intercourse, whereby He unites His living members to Himself."-P. 249–251.

There is no opposition between Christ and the Church, or between individual piety on the one hand and sacramental grace on the other; but just the reverse. Christ becomes full only in and by the Church; and personal experience is made solid and real, only as it rests on grace offered and appropriated from abroad. "To maintain that the outward means of grace, whereby we are united to the manhood of Christ, are not less necessary than those emotions of our own which have their seat within, is not to put the Church instead of Christ, but to protest against men's putting themselves in the place of their Redeemer. To speak of inward seriousness as necessary, is only to testify the truth of each man's separate responsibility; but to speak of it as superseding outward means, is to do away with the office of the 'One Mediator.' The individual life of each man's spirit, as opposed to the carelessness of a thoughtless walk, is the very treading down of Satan under our feet; but to contrast it with the value of Gospel ordinances, is to deny Christ, to depose him from his office of a Mediator, and to set up idols of intercession in our own hearts."-P. 270.

With this view of the significance of christian worship generally, the peculiar sense and power of the holy sacraments are