o you. No twig is independent of another twig. However different
the functions, root and branches, leaves and cluster, all together make
one composite but organic whole. So is it with Christ. All who are
one with Him are one with each other. The branches that were nearest
the root in the days of Pentecost are incomplete without the last
converts that shall be added in the old age of the world. Those
without these will not be made perfect.

This is the underlying truth of the holy Catholic Church. Men have
tried to show that it must be an outward and visible organization,
consisting of those who had received, through a long line of
apostolical succession, some mystic power for administering rites and
conferring absolution, together with those who came beneath the touch
of their priestly hands. That theory has notoriously broken down. But
the truth of which it is a grotesque travesty is presented in our
Lord's conception of the vine, deeply planted in the dark grave of
Joseph's garden, which had reached down its branches through the ages,
and in which every believing soul has a part. Touch Christ, become one
with Him in living union, abide in Him, and you are one with the
glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the
prophets, the noble army of martyrs and the Church of the First-born,
whose names are written in heaven.

_The pliancy of the vine._--More than most plants it needs a
husbandman. It cannot stand upright like other fruit-trees, but
requires a skillful hand to guide its pliant branches along the
espaliers, or to entwine them in the trellis-work. It suggests a true
thought of the appearance presented to the world by Christ and His
Church.

Mrs. Hamilton King, in her description of the sermon preached in the
hospital by Ugo Bassi, on the eve of the great movement which, by the
expulsion of the Austrians, gave Italy to the Italians, specially
dwells on this. Down five wards the prisoners are lying on the
hospital-beds from which they will never rise again. To them the deep
voice of the hero-preacher tells the story of the vine: how "it is tied
to a stake, and if its arms stretch out, it is but cross-wise; they are
also forced and bound."

Thus it was with Christ. Never following His own way; always bound to
the imperative _must_ of the Father's will; yielded to the cross as a
willing Sufferer. And so it has been with His followers. Not strong
to stand alone, but always yielde