xplanation.

But if, surveying this multitude that no man can number from every
kindred, and tribe, and nation, and tongue, you say that entrance to
the invisible church is guarded by barriers that seem to you not high
enough or strong enough, I reply that this membership is indeed tested
by the severest of rules. {291} Do you serve with all your heart, and
soul, and mind, and strength a cause that is superhuman and that is
indeed divine? This is the question which all have to answer who are
to enter this the most spiritual of all human brotherhoods.

IV

The invisible church is to be to us a source of insight. This means
that we must enter into some sort of communion with the faithful if we
are to enjoy the fruits of their insight. And, apart from one's own
life of loyal service itself, the principal means of grace--that is,
the principal means of attaining instruction in the spirit of loyalty,
encouragement in its toils, solace in its sorrows, and power to endure
and to triumph--the principal means of grace, I say, which is open to
any man lies in such communion with the faithful and with the unity of
the spirit which they express in their lives. It is natural that we
should begin this process of communion through direct personal
relations with the fellow-servants of our own special cause. Hence
whatever is usually said by those who belong to any section of the
visible church regarding the spiritual advantages which follow from
entering the communion of their own body may be accepted, from our
present point of view, as having whatever truth the devotion and the
religious life of any one body of faithful servants of the unity of
the spirit may give {292} to such statements when applied precisely to
their own members. But to us all alike the voice of the invisible
church speaks--it sustains us all alike by its counsels, not merely in
so far as our own personal cause and our brethren of that service are
known to us, but in so far as we are ready to understand the loyal
life, and to be inspired by it, even when those who exemplify its
intents and its values are far from us in their type of experience and
in the manner of their service.

You remember the rule of loyalty: "So serve your cause that if
possible through your service everybody whom you influence shall be
rendered a more devoted servant of his own cause, and thereby of the
cause of causes--the unity of all the loyal." Now the r