Kingdom, or we are not living members, but
paralyzed or atrophied. There is a continuity of life in the Church that
cannot be interrupted; we must inherit this life from the past, and we
must pass it on to those who come after us. Just as the first Christians
felt themselves the Israel of God, so today we are conscious of being
the heirs of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, churchmen
and scholars and missionaries, leaders of spiritual awakenings like
Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley, theologians like Clement,
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, and of
countless humble and devoted believers who have been ruled by the Spirit
of the Master. They have bequeathed to us a solemn trust; they have
enriched us with a priceless heritage; they have transmitted to us
their life with Christ in God. The Church comes to us saying:

I am like a stream that flows,
Full of the cold springs that arose
In morning lands, in distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills,
With melting of forgotten snows.

But the historic succession of Christians through the centuries is not
our sole connection with Christ; we not only look _back_ to Him, we also
look _up_ and look _in_ to Him, for He lives above and in us. The Church
is not a widow, but a bride; and shares its Lord's life in the world
today. The same Spirit who lived and ruled in the Church of the first
days has been breathed on us, through the long line of
apostolic-spirited men and women who reach back to Jesus, and lives and
rules in us. We must keep the unity of the Spirit with the believers of
the past, and with all who are Spirit-led in the world today; and we
must remember that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
We are not bound by the precedents of bygone centuries in our
organization; we are free to take from the past what is of worth to us,
and we are free to let the rest go. Is not the Spirit of God as able to
take materials at hand in our own age, and to use them for the
government, the worship, the creed, the methods of the living Church of
Christ?

We cannot, of course, be content with an unrealized unity of the Church.
Every little group of Christians, in the first age, felt itself the
embodiment in its locality of the whole Church, and it was at one in
effort with followers of Jesus everywhere. It exercised hospitality
towards every Christian who came within its neighborhood, welcoming him