throughout our land may yet rise out of their ashes, living bodies
imbued with life and love from their living and loving Head.

Are not all the difficulties, for example, connected with the proper
organisation of the congregation those only that pertain to the
existence of a living Christianity among its members? Given,
that church-members individually were what they profess to
be--"believers"--"disciples"--"brethren"--would they not, as a
necessary result of this character, act collectively, as we suppose a
Christian congregation ought to act? And, therefore, when we assume
that it is vain to think of congregations becoming, as a whole, and in
spite of many exceptions, living bodies of Christians--men united for
mutual good and for the good of the world--do we not thereby assume
that it is vain to expect professing Christians to become "constrained
by the love of Christ not to live to themselves, but to Him who died
for them and rose again?" Must we confess it to be utterly hopeless to
look for such manifestations now of the power of the Spirit as will
produce, in our cities and parishes, such congregations, ay, and far
better ones, as once existed in Jerusalem, Ephesus, or Philippi?

There is another thought which encourages us, and makes us hope that
these same "elements we have to work upon," and which appear to
make our congregations incapable of accomplishing the high and holy
destinies in the world to which we think they are called. It is
this: that just as there are in nature hidden forces--in a quiet
and apparently harmless cask of gunpowder, or electric battery, for
instance--which lie concealed until the right spark calls forth their
latent power into action, so there are, in many more individuals than
we suspect, hidden forces of some kind or other capable of doing
greater things than we could ever have anticipated, and which require