Head, she is filled with life, and firmly knit together with a power that reaches every member, and binds all with a fitness, harmony, and order that makes the Church the most illustrious society in the universe. It is in truth from the Church so constituted, and pervaded by the presence and influence of her Lord, that "the principalities and powers in heavenly places" know "the manifold wisdom of God." (Eph. iii. 10.)

The Apostle uses the present participles, having nourishment ministered, and knit together-words in the present tense-to show that the power of Christ is constantly operative, and that the process of nourishing the Church is continually going on. He is the living Head, and His people live in Him. Contact with Him is not on one occasion as in conversion, at the outset of the spiritual history, but must be constantly renewed. What is true for the Church is also true for individuals. Every day the spiritual life of the soul is nourished by Christ, and the force which knits it to others, so as to strengthen the unity of the body, is daily renewed. The life that we now live in the flesh must be a life of faith on Him; His fulness is always overflowing, and His riches inexhaustible. Does not the leanness of much of the nominal life in the Church show that nourishment is sought elsewhere than in communion with the Lord? How often do many professing Christians seek to feed on husks which the world provides, instead of feeding on the bread of life.

St. Paul's words suggest another thought. The power that flows from Christ to the Church is universally operative: 66 'from which all the body," etc. No part of the body, no member of the Church, is either overlooked or beyond the reach of His blessed influence. Grace is constantly issuing from the Head to nourish and knit together all the members. The supply is unceasing and unfailing. From the beginning of time the earth has yielded produce

for the supply of the bodily wants of mankind; but the highest produce is generally in response to the hardest toil and most approved culture, and at times the soil requires rest, and must be allowed to lie fallow. From the first, Christ has been sustaining the Church, and nourishing souls; yet He fainteth not, neither is He weary. He requires no rest. His resources are boundless. Every part of the Church is replenished by Him, and the need of every soul is met by Him. With Christ Jesus there is no stint, and none are sent away empty from Him. Whatsoever may be your peculiar want, or taste, or temperament, you will find in Him all that you need—more than you can conceive—a continual supply of seasonable grace.

III. Note the actual result of this nourishing process, as here mentioned by St. Paul. The body "increaseth with the increase of God." Or, as the words really mean, it "groweth the growth of God." The Church can grow only as it receives nourishment from Christ; and its growth corresponds with its nature. There may be some kinds of progress, such as advancement in worldly respectability, secular wealth, and ecclesiastical routine, without communion with the Saviour; but this is not the increase of God. There can be no growth without life, and no life but in Christ. What, then, is the increase of God? It is the increase which He gives, of which He is the source, and which flows from His influence. There may be morbid accretion without this; but it will only be the unhealthy swelling of worldly pomp, or ecclesiastical pretension, or spiritual pride. The real growth of the Christian soul, as well as the growth of the Church, must come from the same source as its life. It is an increase after the Divine plan or pattern-a growth in every Divine and spiritual grace, agreeable to the will and in accordance with the purpose of God. This is the true expansion and development of the body of Christ-a growth

from the living centre; an intensification of graces and an increase of numbers going on until the Church fairly fulfil her mission as the joy of all the earth and the refuge of humanity. This great and blessed result will be seen when each member so realizes his union to Christ, as freely to combine with and act upon every other. Then will be fulfilled the Saviour's own words, "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me." (John xvii. 23.) Hence it must be an increase for the Divine glory. This will be its end and issue in the eyes of angels and men: it will show forth His praise, and advance His honour in the universe. The works which He has made proclaim His eternal power and Godhead: the heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handiwork: all creation abounds in tokens of His majesty and skill, and is vocal with the praise of His goodness; but more intelligent, grateful, and glorious is the voice which arises from the growing Church of the redeemed, as she sings in adoration of Him who has gathered and is gathering her members out of every land, and forming her for His habitation and delight for evermore. This increase is truly the increase of God; it redounds to His glory, and illustrates the triumph of His grace.

XXVI.

Ritualism Described and Condemned.

"Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh."-COLOSSIANS ii. 20-23.

IN

N these verses we have both an appeal and an argument. The Apostle remonstrates with the Colossians against their being made subject to the ordinances of a past age, when as Christians they were dead with Christ. He wishes them to have a clear apprehension of the safety, sufficiency and glory of their standing in Christ, and dwells with fulness on the danger of submitting the soul to ceremonial observances when insisted on as necessary to salvation. We see from what he states in some of his other epistles compared with what he writes here, that he made a great difference in his thought and treatment between the man of tender conscience, who for conscience' sake observed some distinctions in matter of food or drink, and the man of spiritual pretensions, who as a teacher insisted on the necessity of these distinctions. The one he would treat as a weak brother, to whom he himself would become weak; the other he treats

with holy condemnation and indignant rebuke, as insisting on that which is both dishonouring to the Lord and deceitful to the souls of men. This would be to add something to the gospel of Christ, or to substitute something for it, a danger which is ever to be resisted.

I. Consider the appeal: "If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" This was an appeal to them in their position and profession as Christians, an appeal based on their liberty. They had died with Christ; and in their union to Him they had died to that which had met its consummation and fulfilment in His death. There is thus a distinct assertion of Christian freedom, and of freedom secured through the Saviour's death. They were dead with Christ, and so were set free from the rudiments-the rudimentary lessons-of the world. The world here evidently has a reference to the Mosaic economy as a material or outward dispensation, in contrast with the Christian as a spiritual dispensation-an idea not uncommon in the New Testament. 66 Ye are not come," says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 18), "to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest." Ye are not come to the outward and material dispensation: "but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem"--to the heavenly and spiritual dispensation. Hence, those who had confessed Christ as their Lord and Master had nothing more to do with the rudiments or elements of that dispensation. The rudiments are the first and lowest lessons by which God taught His people-the elementary methods of instruction by type, and picture, and symbol. The death of the Son of God abrogated the ritual law; and His disciples, being one with Him in that death, have nothing more to do with its rudiments. Christ Himself died from