This invisible Church exists within the visible societies of organized Christianity, in the local Christian congregations. Christian faith is never independent of the means which God has appointed for producing faith, the Gospel and the Sacraments. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 10, 17). This faith-creating word of evangelical grace is an audible and visible matter. Its presence in any locality is cognizable by the senses. It becomes attached, moreover, by Christ's ordaining, to certain visible elements, as the water in Baptism and the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. Hence these two Christian ordinances--the only two for which a divine word of command and promise, hence, a divine institution can be shown--also become related to faith, to its origin and preservation. For of Baptism our Lord says: "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3, 5). To be "born again," or to become a child of God, according to John 1, 12, is the same as "to believe." Accordingly, Paul says: "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3, 26. 27). Of the Sacrament our Lord says: "This is the blood of the covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26, 28); and His apostle declares that communicants, "as often as they eat of this bread and drink of this cup, do show the Lord's death till He come" (1 Cor. 11, 26). The Gospel and the Sacraments, now, become the marks of the Church, the unfailing criteria of its existence in any place. For, according to the declaration of God, they are never entirely without result, though many to whom they are brought resist the gracious operation of the Spirit through these means. By Isaiah God has said: "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater: so shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" (Is. 55, 10. 11). Among the people who in a given locality rally around the Word and the Sacraments and profess allegiance to them, there is the Church, because there is the power of God unto salvation, the faith-producing and faith-sustaining Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who embrace what the Gospel offers with a lively faith, and in the power of their faith proceed to lead holy lives in accordance with the teaching of God's Word, are the members of the true Church of God, the kingdom of Christ. Those who adhere only externally to these institutions are merely nominal members. They may at heart be hypocrites and secret blasphemers.