two entirely separate things, and
although to many it may still seem hard to do without this distinction,
or in the existing condition of the nominally Christian world to employ
that primitive conception of the Church even as, so to speak, a working
hypothesis, I would ask whether the primitive conception is not a nobler
and sounder one. Surely it places the ideal in its right relation to the
actual. The full realisation of the ideal no doubt belongs only to
another world; yet if we believe in it as an ideal we must seek to
actualise it here. There is something unwholesome in acknowledging any
ideal which we do not strive so far as we can to actualise. And plainly
participation in the same grace, and the spiritual ties arising
therefrom, ought to find expression in an outer life of fellowship, of
intercourse and common action, and such common organisation as for human
beings in this world these require. No doubt it is always too possible
that the outward may hinder the perception of the inward. But if we can
guard successfully against this danger, the inward and spiritual will
become all the more potent by having the external form through which to
work; while the outward, if it is too sharply dissevered in thought from
the inward, loses its value and even becomes injurious.

Again, a view of the Church is more wholesome which does not encourage
us to classify its members in a manner only possible to the Allseeing
God; to draw a line between true believers and others, and to determine
(it may be) on which side of the line different ones are by their having
had spiritual experiences similar to our own, and having learned to use
the same religious language that we do; but which on the contrary leads
us to think of all as under the Heavenly Father's care, and subject to
the influences of the Holy Spirit, and placed in that Body of Christ
where, although the spiritual life in them is as yet of very various
degrees of strength, and their knowledge of things Divine in many cases
small, all may and are intended to advance to maturity in Christ.

It is necessary that the relation of the idea of the Church upon which I
have been dwelling to her subsequent history for centuries should be
clearly apprehended. Its hold on the minds of Christians preceded the
very beginnings of organisation in the Christian communities, and it
would probably be no exaggeration to say that it governed the whole
evolution of that organisation for many