It is, we think, fully established, that the center of attraction to which all souls were bound, and around which all souls revolved, was Christ Jesus our Lord; and that faith in Him, love of Him, obedience to Him, formed the bond of fellowship among Christians.

We have yet to consider the sufficiency of this bond, and its divine adaptedness to its purpose.

BOND OF FELLOWSHIP.

Having seen that the bond of fellowship in the apostolic churches was faith in and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, it remains to show how and why this was the all-sufficient and only-sufficient bond.

Men are held and swayed by leaders. This ever has been, ever will be so. The diffusion of intelligence and the progress of education among the masses makes no difference in this respect, except that the leadership must be wiser and worthier. Men will ever look for some embodiment of that which they are disposed to love and honor; and when they find it, or fancy that they find it, their confidence gathers about such a leader, their enthusiasm is kindled by his presence, and they will follow him to victory or to death. They lose all differences in their common devotion to him. Every one knows how true this is in military life. It is true in political life, also. Nor is it less true in intellectual life. In philosophy, a few great minds have ruled the world of thought; and there is a subtle tyranny, vastly more powerful and more slavishly obeyed to-day than our modern philosphers are at all willing to admit, of Plato and Aristotle, and a few other great lights in the philosophical heavens. They are central orbs to which even modern leaders of thought are but satellites. And the greatest of all these leaders-Plato-after his matchless mastery of

the most profound and intricate problems of the intellectual and moral universe, felt and acknowledged his own need of just such an incarnation of truth, wisdom and goodness as Christianity now offers to a world groping in darkness.

In religion, with its mighty and awful problems of life and death, duty and destiny, sin and holiness, the origin and the end of things, the multitude have never been able to rise to abstract conceptions of truth, or to draw inspiration from abstract reasonings. The hero worship of the world, and the universal sway of idolatrous religions, prove this. Among the Jews, it was Moses rather than Jehovah, who led them; or, rather, Jehovah led them through Moses. "Speak thou unto us, and we will hear thee," said the Jews to Moses, but let not God speak to us any more, lest we die." In the absence of leaders, that nation soon came to the verge of destruction; every upward and onward movement was under some God-given leader whom they could honor as standing in the place of God to them, and in a common devotion to whom they could forget their strifes and alienations. Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah, are notable instances of this.

But for humanity at large there was needed a leader infinitely transcending all ordinary leaders in knowledge, wisdom, power, and the perfection of holiness. He must be man-one with humanity in its interests and feelings, who could know and sympathize with its woes and its helplessness; and he must be God-worshipful in the divine perfection of his nature, and capable of guiding human nature through all the intricate labyrinths of this life to a worthy destiny, and able to

redeem it from the curse of sin and of death, and lift it to glory, honor and immortality. He must be near us and with us and of us, to be loved; he must be infinitely above us, to be adored. He must know all truth, so that when he speaks we can believe him. He must speak as an oracle the great truths which reason can not master. He must reveal as a God, not reason as a philosopher; he must furnish demonstration in facts, not plausibilities or probabilities in hypotheses. Then can men surrender themselves to him in the blissful repose of faith, and follow where he leads the way, through life or death, saying, "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed unto him against the day of death and of eternity." Such a leader is given in Him of whom it was said, "Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and a commander to the people." Jesus came not as a reasoner, to prove that what he affirmed of the great problems of life and death, sin and holiness, heaven and hell, God and man, was logically correct; but as a Witness

-"the faithful and true witness"-to testify to what he knew of all these things. He came not to expatiate on the charms of virtue and rectitude, but to go before men in the ways of goodness and holiness-their Leader in the conquest of sin and the exemplification of obedience to the will of God. He came not to break the bond of false authority that men might be free to follow their own ways; but a Commander, clothed with authority over conscience and heart and life, to bind men in willing bonds to the everlasting laws of truth and right. "He of God is made unto

us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption."

A perishing race found in Him what met its wants, redeemed it from its woes, inspired it with loftiest devotion, and lifted it out of the despair of sin and death into the joys of pardoning grace and the triumphs of heavenly hope. The masses of humanity, gathering about Christ as a center, in drawing nearer to a common center, drew nearer to each other; and that faith and love which bound them to him, bound them to each other for His sake. Christ was all and in all. This was the secret of primitive unity and union. All differences were lost, all antagonisms were overcome by the overmastering enthusiasm of the new faith and love with which all hearts were inspired. "Now, then, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone-in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph. ii. 19-22).

It is in the nature of things that we grow into the likeness of that which we love and worship. So long as Christ was the object of supreme faith and love, that fellowship which began in a common faith was fostered and strengthened by a universal and evergrowing godliness. They were changed into the same image with Christ, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Selfishness, with all its bitter fruits, was supplanted by a divine benevolence. The disintegrating tendencies of sin gave way to the unify