1 Cor. xi. 26. 2 Cor. v. 19. ground of the truth. Moreover, the Holy Communion is a standing proclamation to the world of that pivotal fact of the Evangel-the atoning death of the Son of God. As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come. Viewed in this light alone, the historic value of this ordinance, to say nothing of its moral import or personal benefits, is beyond computation. It repeats from age to age the crucifixion scene. Let every page of ecclesiastical history, save those which record the observance of this sacrament, be torn out of the world's chronicles; let it only be shown that in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Corinth, in Rome, in Alexandria, in the villages of the Alps, in Geneva, in London, in Calcutta, in Boston, in San Francisco, in Philadelphia, this rite has been celebrated, and each celebration is a fresh witness to that ancient crucifixion. The Holy Communion immortalizes Calvary. From the very beginning, whenever it has been celebrated, it has stood like a buttress of the truth amid the foaming whirlpools of time, towering like a celestial monument above the seething surges of the centuries, inscribed with the hieroglyphs of our faith, emblazoned with the memorials of the finished redemption, augustly testifying from generation to generation that central fact and truth of all history-that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself through the victorious passion of the everlasting Son. Thus does the Church of the living God, by exhibiting in her own creed, and worship, and sacraments, the truth as it is in Jesus, become the world's light. But the Church is the world's light, secondly, in virtue of her own character as being modeled after Christ's. Here, again, you see the unspeakable importance of using the term church with utmost accuracy. I am not speaking to-day of a church or even the aggregate of Christ's professing followers; but I am speaking of the one Church spiritual, catholic, indivisible, immortalthe one corporation of the regenerate-Christ's own Body. And I say of this Church that she is the light of the world in virtue of her own character. Not that the light which streams from the Church is her own light, inherent in herself; it is but secondary light, coming back in reflection from her on whom the Sun of Righteousness Himself shines. The world can no longer see Jesus Christ in person; He has ascended, and a cloud has received Him out of sight of men. But His Church remains a city set on a hill-still catching and reflecting His beams in the privileged kinship of a moral sympathy. And so she becomes in this world's dark night its blessed light, even that lesser light to rule the night, while her Lord Gen. 1. 16. Himself is the greater light to rule the day, even that coming day when the returning King shall be to a redeemed earth her everlasting light and Isaiah Ix. 19. glory. Meantime the Church, lustrous with His effulgence, is irradiating the earth. See the light she sheds, e. g., on questions in morals and casuistry. Not that she formally solves these problems in the cloisters of her seminaries or the chambers of her councils. She unconsciously solves them by her exhibitions of character in the thorough Rom. xiii. 12. Tennyson. Isaiah xxxv. i. fares of daily life. Casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light, even the gleaming panoply of the Beatitudes-the Church of the Prince of Peace is indeed the light of the world. Little as the world dreams it, the Church of the Beatitudes, as it everlastingly circles in the sweet gravitation of love around the Sun of Righteousness, and lustrous with His beams, majestically flashes “Like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, The Church of the Mountain Instruction is the Thus does the Church of the living God by her Bible, by her Sabbath, by her public worship, by her sacraments, by her Sunday-schools, by her varied missionary and benevolent organizations, by her creeds as crystallized into formulas and confessions of faith, by her saintly life, by her very existence as a separated community, hold, guard, illustrate, defend, propagate the truth as it is in Jesus; and truth as it is in Jesus is the The World's world's salt and light. Debt to the Viewed in this aspect, who can estimate the world's debt to the Church? Take the lowest view; its value as bearing on earthly interests is beyond compute. It is not too much to say that to the Church of Jesus Christ, vastly more than to any other institution or institutions, human society is indebted for its ideas of personal and civic freedom, for its equitable jurisprudence, for the security of its lives and property, for its peaceful homes, for the sacredness of the marriagebond, for its practical arts, for its growing ameliorations, for its general intelligence and virtuein a word, for its civilization. I am aware that this is not a universally accepted opinion. I am aware that it is given out that the civilizer of the world is not the Church but the Academy, not the Bible but the Laboratory. Why, then, I ask and demand, do you find high civilization only in Christendom, universal barbarism only in heathendom? Ah! had it not been for this same Church of the Nazarene which these champions of a Christless civilization so affect to despise, they themselves might to-day, with the ancient Druids, have been smeared and tattooed, and heaving at some cromlech-stone on which to offer a human sacrifice, or, with the ancient sages of Egypt, have been prostrating themselves before the ibis of the Nile or the sarcophagus of a deified bull. No, when the history of this world shall be fully and truly written, as it never yet has been but will most surely be; when the forces which have really preserved and guided society shall be duly recognized and set forth, each in its proper relation and aspect; when the superficial and phe Psalm xlviii. 12, 13. Foster Christian Institutions. nomenal shall be stripped off and the controlling and elemental laid bare-it shall be seen and confessed that the forces which had really kept and shaped society and impelled it in the line of advance, were neither wealth nor industry nor political sagacity nor commerce nor art nor philosophy nor education nor civilization-useful and noble as these are; but Christian Character as shaped in the golden mold of the Mountain Instruction. And the chroniclers who now offer strange incense at the shrines of human statesmanship and earthly genius and natural development shall reverently turn to the Church of the living God, and, like the ancient pilgrims climbing the heights of the City of the great King, shall send to each other the grateful challenge: "Walk about Zion, and go round about her, Count her towers, Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; Thus the Church of Jesus Christ is alike the conservative and the progressive element in humanity. As the salt of the earth, she saves human capacity as the light of the world, she guides what she has saved. Foster, then, all Christian institutions. Don't trust too much to mere civilization. It is a temptation to which we Americans are peculiarly exposed. The danger is that we are trusting too much in our form of government, our material resources, our educational institutions, in a single word, our civilization. But recall the fate of |