points of practice and have battled for these to the death. We should have had an institution, Divinely authorised, and which therefore could not in the smallest particular be changed, imposed on races inheriting different temperaments, and one ecclesiastical rule would have been fixed for all time. In all matters of procedure the one question asked would have been, “What was the practice of the Lord?” Church polity would have depended wholly on conclusions drawn from antiquarian study and, what would have been worse than all, people having outgrown the institutions regarded as Divine would have lulled their consciences by being studiously regardful of the form after the meaning had disappeared, and they would have stretched the formulæ to make them fit the times. In doing this they would have played fast and loose with their honesty of mind. Moreover it seems to me an incongruity that the Redeemer of the World should also be the founder of a local Church; the disproportion is so vast between the two terms. A way was perfected in that night of prayer upon the hills, whereby an organic life was imparted to the little community without setting up a Church, from the pattern of which no deviation could be allowed. The Twelve formed a centre round which the disciples might cluster, and this rudiment of organisation was enough for the time. Christ gave only such a germ of external polity as the immediate need required. The commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and that it was well for the children of light to be as “wise in their generation” as the children of the world. When a danger or perplexity offers itself to men, they seek counsel one of another, but our Lord takes counsel of the Father alone, there is with Him no hesitancy, no balancing of this course against that. In this case, when the morning comes His resolve is distinct, and it is forthwith carried out. The constitution and proper functions of the body that He should create, as well as the persons who were to be the first members, all were determined on. We read: “He went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God;”(160) again, we have “He goeth up into the mountain, and calleth unto him whom he himself would: and they went unto him. And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to cast out devils.”(161)