Himself to be even unto the end of the world. They recognize in it a kingdom "not made with hands, not of this world," yet sent into this world, an illustrious guest, to bring to this world Salvation. They behold in it the glorious link which connects together, through every age and in every clime, the blessed company of all faithful people, the school in which the multitude whom no man can number, learn the song which they are hereafter, standing on the sea of glass, to sing before the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne on high. They reverence in it,—but on these subjects I dare not further enlarge,—the body of the Redeemer Himself, and His mystic Bride below.
Such is, we may imagine, some faint outline of the view which would be taken of the Church by its true and approved members. With what reverence, then, must that Church, whether considered collectively or with reference to any given national branches of it—while, at least, such branches continue in their first faith—be by them regarded! And what a triumph must it be for the dark spirit of evil, when he succeeds in blotting from the mind of a baptized member of that Church every vestige of these exalting themes of contemplation; when he induces one entitled to rejoice in the blessed fellowship of the sons of God, to turn his eyes from these glories of his inheritance, and to fix them, exclusively, on the earthly accompaniments by which the Church, while here militant below, maintains her connection with the external world.
But, alas! is he not doing this on every side around us? Is he not daily tempting ourselves to regard the Church, a true branch of the Church Catholic, established in these our islands, as a mere human institution? to consider the revenues with which the piety of holy men of old endowed its Ministers, as a provision set apart by the state for the purposes of education, with a view to the temporal advantage of society? and to imagine that those Ministers themselves are the servants of the government, appointed by its authority, primarily responsible to it for the discharge of their duties, and subject (like civil or military officers appointed by the executive), alike with respect to the extent and to the duration of their powers, to its general superintendence and control.
Such views are, in these days, notoriously too common; and a
