In what has been said above we have been attending chiefly to the restraints which St. Paul's idea of church unity appears to set upon what are commonly known as 'ecclesiastical tendencies.' {164} Now it is time to emphasize the other side of the representation. For without a strongly engrained prejudice, there is not, it seems to the present writer, any possibility of doubting that St. Paul meant by 'the Church' in general, a society visible and organized, represented by a number of visible and organized local societies or churches[18]. The Church is in fact ideal in its spiritual character, but not one bit the less an association of human beings, a society with quite definite limits, ties, and obligations. For, to begin with, the 'one baptism' which conveyed the spiritual gift of incorporation into Christ was also the initiation into an actual brotherhood, with its rules of conduct, worship, and belief: 'we were all baptized into one body[19].' The 'one Spirit' was normally bestowed by the 'laying on of' apostolic 'hands'--that is, the hands of the chief governors of the Christian corporation. This rite followed upon and completed baptism, and its administration had {165} been one of St. Paul's first ministerial acts after he began his preaching at Ephesus[20]. Again, 'the breaking of the bread' or eucharist, according to St. Paul's teaching, both nourished the life of Christ in the Church, as being the communion of His body and blood, and also, in the 'one loaf,' symbolized its outward corporate unity[21].