I.

HE World and the Church are two opposing forces. To make everything move easily, the Church ought to be entirely composed of good people and the World of bad. As matters stand, there are a great many sinners in the Church and a great many saints in the World. Moreover, the people who are good are not good all the way through, and the people who are bad have many excellent qualities, which complicates the case still further. Also, the Church is and should be aggressive, for the avowed design of its Leader is to reign till he hath put all things under his feet. But its chief weapon should be love; and because it will not confine itself to this weapon, it is far less aggressive than it should be. Instead of loving the sinner while hating the sin, it often falls into a way of loving itself and hating the sinner. The World, being a very observant, as

well as a very wicked World, sees this, and falls to making reprisals. It gathers together the sins of Christians, and builds thereof a bulwark for itself against Christianity, behind which it pours its small shot into the Church. In all this the World is entirely wrong, though the Church is very far from right. The World, in the first place, makes the mistake of thinking that, when a man "joins the church," he steps out of the sphere of ordinary humanity, is to be measured by different standards, and is amenable to new laws, standards and laws which have no relation to other men. His faults and foibles immediately assume a new importance. His movements are watched with careful scrutiny, and criticised with rigid severity. Failings become vices; faults, crimes; and an imperfect man, a hypocrite. Constitutional tendencies to particular sins, formerly unmarked or but slightly noticed, are first exaggerated, and then turned into an occasion for innuendoes and sneers, if not against the Christian religion, at least against its profession and its professors.

This is all wrong. It is founded on a wrong idea. What is it to "join the church"? "Does he profess to be a good man?" I once heard a person ask; and many people seem to fancy that when a man joins the church he professes to be good, better than other people; and they accordingly set themselves to work to ascertain and prove that he is not. But is there a church in the

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land that requires its members to make a profession of goodness? I never heard of such a one. Those who enter into church covenants profess to love Christ, and promise to obey his commands, and to watch over each other; but I never heard a single individual declare himself to be good, holy, righteous. 'Joining the church" is rather a profession of belief in and love of God, and of an intention to do his will. This is done, first, because Christ is supposed to have ordained some such profession; secondly, because each man, endowing his own weakness with his brother's strength, is supposed thereby to be better able to resist temptation, and to grow in grace; and, thirdly, because the Christianization of the world is expected to be sooner effected by ranging the guns, than by letting each man fire his shot at random. I know no other profession and no other purpose. In what respect, then, does this place a man on a new plane? He simply promises to do what it is the imperative duty of every human being to do. No possible vow can increase its imperativeness. The acknowledgment of obligation does not create obligation. The recognition of relation does not establish relation. Every human being owes allegiance to God. All that he has and all that he is belongs now and forever to God. No contract can increase, and no absence of contract can diminish, the weight of such obligation.

rule.

It follows, then, that church-members and nonchurch-members are to be judged by the same No duties are incumbent on the one that are not incumbent on the other. I do not mean to imply that the standard by which Christians are measured should be lowered. Lowered? Heaven forbid! No one is in danger of failing because he sets his mark too high. The grander the attempt, the grander the achievement. It is only by following on to know the Lord, that we learn to know him at all. Let not one jot or tittle be taken from the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. But what I do say is, that a non-church-member has no right to consider an act sinful in a church-member that would not be sinful in himself; nor a sinful act to be any more so in the one than in the other. If it is wrong for a church-member to steal, to commit forgery, to drink wine, to gamble, to play cards, to mend his tools on Sunday, to stay away from church, to be crabbed, fretful, impatient, violent-tempered, it is also wrong, and equally wrong, for a non-church-member. For a man to excuse wrong-doing in himself, on the plea that he does not belong to the church, or to exaggerate it in others on the plea that they do, is absurd. He ought to belong to the church. He ought to have that state of heart and will which would justify him in doing so. If it is the duty of one, it is the duty of all. If Christ has left,