It is possible to have a Church which shall be ready to teach and preach the gospel, not to a few pew-holders only, but to the whole community. Every child born in New England is taught the elements of secular knowledge without money and without price. Are the waters of earthly knowledge, then, so much more essential to the safety of the state than the waters of life, that we cannot risk the chance of leaving any child uninstructed in reading and writing, but may leave him untaught in the gospel? It would seem to be possible, since we have free schools, to have also free Churches, and so really to have, what we profess to maintain, _Public Worship_! There is no such thing now as public worship. The churches are not public places—each belongs to a private corporation of pew-holders. It is possible to have a Church which shall consider it its duty to obey its Master’s first command, and “preach the gospel to every creature.” Its mission shall be to go out into the highways and the hedges, to seek and save the lost. It will regard the world as its field, and the whole community as its sphere of labor—the whole community, according to its needs, to be taught, helped, comforted, and cured by the gospel. It is possible to have a Church which shall be united, not on ceremonies, nor on a creed, but on study and labor, on loving and doing. The condition of admission should be the purpose to get good and do good. They should enter this school to learn, and not because they were already learned; to become good, and not because they were already so. It is possible to have a Church which shall make it its purpose to educate the whole man—spirit, soul, and body; and not merely the spirit; to present the human being to God perfect and entire, wanting nothing. It is possible to have a Church which shall combine union and freedom. The Roman Church, aiming at union, and neglecting freedom, has a union which is no real union; which is an outward shell of conformity, without inward unity of heart and thought. The Protestant Church, desiring freedom and neglecting union, has a freedom which is not really freedom, being only the outward liberty of tolerated opinions, but one in which free thought is discouraged, and honest difference of opinion disallowed. Only by combining in a living whole such antagonist needs, can either of these be fully secured. Union without freedom is not union; freedom without union, not freedom. There is no harmony in the juxtaposition of similar notes, but in the concord of dissimilar ones. Difference without discord, variety in harmony, the unity of the spirit with diversity of the letter, difference of operation, but the same Lord, many members, but one body,—this is very desirable, and wholly possible.