body--a
higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if
every member were but a repetition of a single type. It is conceivable
that God might have moulded such a form for human life; it is
conceivable that every cause, instead of producing in different nerves
a variety of sensations, should have affected every one in a mode
precisely similar; that instead of producing a sensation of sound--a
sensation of colour--a sensation of taste--the outward causes of
nature, be they what they may, should have given but one unvaried
feeling to every sense, and that the whole universe should have been
light or sound.

That would have been unity, if sameness be unity; but, says the
apostle, "if the whole body were seeing, where were the hearing?" That
uniformity would have been irreparable loss--the loss of every part
that was merged into the one. What is the body's unity? Is it not
this? The unity of a living consciousness which marvellously animates
every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to the performance
of a function fitted to the welfare of the whole--its own, not
another's: so that the inner spirit can say of the remotest, and in
form most unlike, member, "That too, is myself."

3. None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both of the
individual and the Church. All other systems of unity, except the
apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the individual, or the
individual to the Church.

Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such a way that
every individual opinion becomes truth, and every utterance of private
conscience right: thus the Church is sacrificed to the individual; and
the universal conscience, the common faith, becomes as nothing; the
spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there
are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the
particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed.
Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church
exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the
Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge,
and are concentrated on the formation and protection of individual
character; and the individual is then most complete--that is, most a
Christian--when he has practically learned that his life is not his
own, but owed to other