and is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Then, as the
gauzy mists of time part before the breath of God, the accomplished
oneness of the Church shall stand revealed.

I. THE ONENESS OF BELIEVERS IS A SPIRITUAL ONENESS.--Can there be any
reasonable doubt of this when our Master asks so clearly that we may be
one, _as the Father and He are one_? The model for Christian unity is
evidently the unity between the Father and Son by the Holy Spirit; and
since that unity, the unity of the blessed God, is not corporeal, nor
physical, nor substantial to the eye of the flesh, may we not
infer--nay, are we not compelled to infer--that the oneness of
believers is to be after the same fashion, and to consist in so close
an identity of nature, so absolute an interfusion of spirit, as that
they shall be one in aim, and thought, and life, and spirit,
spiritually one with each other, because spiritually one with Him?

The Church of Rome, which has ever travestied in gross material forms
the most spiritual conceptions of God, sought to prove herself the true
Church by achieving a oneness of her own. It was an outward and
visible oneness. In the apostate church every one must utter the same
formularies, worship in the same postures, and belong to the same
ecclesiastical system. And its leaders did their best to realize their
dream. They endeavored to exterminate heresy by fire, and sword, and
torture. They spread their network through the world. And just before
the dawn of the Reformation they seemed to have succeeded. At the
beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe reposed in the monotony of
almost universal uniformity, beneath the almost universal supremacy of
the Papacy. Rome might indeed have adopted the insolent language of
the Assyrian of prophecy: "As one gathereth eggs, so have I gathered
all the earth, and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the
mouth, or peeped." And what was the result? _What but the deep sleep
of spiritual death_? And herein lay the most crushing condemnation of
the Roman Catholic conception of the unity of the Church.

Many modern notions of Christian unity seem to proceed on the same
line. The assent to a certain credal basis, the meeting in great
Catholic conventions, the exchange of pulpits--these seem to exhaust
the conceptions of large numbers, and to satisfy their ideal. But
surely there is a bond of union deeper, holier, more vital and more
blessed than any