him understanding." Now, this is a very curious fact;
for one would have expected that about the first thing suggested by the
appellations of Christian bodies would have been some phase or other of
the inward life.

But we are not going to spend our time to-night in discussing sects, or
deploring their divisions, although we cannot altogether refrain regret
when we contemplate the seamless robe of Christ rent into more than
twain, and dabbled in blood worse than Joseph's coat was when his
father said, "Some evil beast hath devoured him"; and although it does
seem to us sometimes, as we contemplate the havoc of schisms and strife
of sects, as if some convulsion from beneath had shaken down the towers
of the New Jerusalem, and streams from the nether fires had coursed
down the channels of the river of life. What we want to do is to think
a little about the true Broad Church; not that branch of Christianity
which commonly goes under the name, and which makes one of the
instances referred to of the unsuitableness of names applied to
religious schools and parties, but the spiritual Broad Church, which is
the church of enlarged hearts. The school we want to belong to is the
school of spiritual free-thinkers, who are at liberty to learn all that
God has to teach them. The true Broad Church is that in which an
enlarged obedience to God's commandments is brought about by an
enlarged experience of His love; and His commandments and His love are
both of them exceeding broad.

All true spiritual life must widen the soul; the more we live with
Jesus, the more impossible will it be for any of us to be narrow. Our
littleness takes refuge with God, and His greatness makes its abode
with us; we bring Him our unworthiness and He imparts to us His
righteousness; we offer to Him our hearts barren of sympathy and
deficient in affection, and presently we find the love of God shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that is given to us.

Thus, when acquainted with God we cannot be really narrow; they might
as well call the Lord Jesus Christ narrow. We want to be as broad in
our sympathies and in our views as He was; and neither broader nor
narrower.

True spiritual life will widen the soul in its _possessions_, its
_perceptions_, its _will_, and its _love_; it will extend our powers of
_having_, of _knowing_, of _willing_, and of _loving_; and, in one or
other of these four, most of our life is included.

(1) How very little w