l who are in New Testament language denominated SAINTS; by which he
means all who, having been baptized in the faith, have this name by
being called and baptized. Then he states all Christian believers to
have communion and fellowship with these, whether living or dead. We
should feel towards such persons (evidently, as the good Bishop implies,
without reference to any particular church order) all sympathy and
kindness as members of the same great spiritual family on earth,
expectants of meeting in heaven in the presence of God and of the Lamb,
and of joining in the worship of saints and angels round the throne. I
have no hesitation in declaring my full conviction that such
expectations of future communion should supply a very powerful and
sacred motive for our cultivating all spiritual union in our power with
all fellow-Christians, all for whom Christ died. It becomes a very
serious subject for examination of our own hearts, how, by _refusing_
any spiritual intercourse with Christians who are not strictly members
of our own Church, we may contravene this noble doctrine of the
Communion of Saints; for does not the bitterness with which sometimes we
find all union with certain fellow-Christians in the Church on earth
chill or check the feeling of a desire for union with the same in the
Church above? Nay, is there not matter for men's earnest thought, how
far the violent animosity displayed against the smallest approach to
anything like spiritual communion with all Christians of a different
Church from their own may chill the DESIRE itself for "meeting in the
Church above?" Can hatred to meeting on earth be in any sense a right
preliminary or preparation for desire to meet in Heaven? Nay, more,
should we not carefully guard lest the bitter displays we see of
religious hostility may even tend to bring men's minds towards a
_disinclination_ to meet in Heaven, of which the most terrible condition
was thus expressed by Southey:--"Earth could not hold us both, nor can
one heaven[194]."

One mark of any particular Church being a portion of Christ's Church on
earth seems to be overlooked by some of our English friends, and that is
a mark pointed out by our Lord himself, when he said, "By their FRUITS
ye shall know them." By this announcement I would understand that
besides and beyond a profession of the great articles of the Christian
faith, I would, as a further criterion of a Christian church, inquire if
there were many of its