peace, we may well suppose that God would sanction their
making like impressions, in his own house, upon the hearts of those whom
they meet there face to face. Might they not communicate personally what
they communicate through the press? For example, why should not Robert
Hall have preached his sermons on Infidelity and on the Death of the
Princess of Wales, perhaps the two most magnificent discourses in the
language, in an English Cathedral? Why should not the beautiful
astronomical discourses of Thomas Chalmers have been delivered in St.
Paul's or in St. John's, Edinburgh? For many years, in want of better
materials, the sermons of Dr. Blair were more used in the Church of
England, and more read in private, than any similar compositions. It has
been for years a growing persuasion in my own mind that principles of
Christian love and mutual harmony are too often sacrificed to the desire
of preserving the exact and formal marks of church order, as the Bishop
of St. Andrews so happily expressed it to preserve _etiquette_. Surely
the great law of Christian love would suggest and enforce a union at
least of spirit amongst Christian believers, who cannot join in the
unity of the same organisation. Inability to join in the same form of
church polity and church order need not shut the door to religious
sympathies and religious communion, where there are so many points of
agreement and of mutual interest. The experience of the past will tend
to produce the conviction that there has too often been in our religious
disputes a strong tendency in all Christian denominations to make the
great principle of love, which is a principle to rule in Heaven and for
eternity, actually subservient and subordinate to a system of
ecclesiastical order, which, important as it is for its own purposes and
objects, never can be more than a guide to the ministration of the
Church on earth, and an organisation which must be in its nature
confined to time.

Wherever or whenever this feeling may be called forth, it is a grievous
error--it is a very serious subject for our reflection, how far such
want of sympathy and of union with those who do not belong immediately
to our own church, must generate a feeling hostile to a due reception of
an important article of our faith, termed in the Apostles' Creed the
COMMUNION OF SAINTS. According to the description given by the judicious
and learned Bishop Pearson, this communion or spiritual union belongs to
al