But He likewise acted as the Head of His Church, with the dignity and authority of the chief visible Ruler. He was the living bond of His disciples: the person around whom they grouped: whose presence wrought harmony: whose voice terminated contention among them: who was ever at hand to solve emergent difficulties. Thus it is that prophecy distinguished Him as "the Lord," "the King," "the Shepherd;" "on whose shoulders is the government," "who should _rule_ His people, Israel." And His Church answers to Him in this capacity, as the family, the house, the city, the fold, and the kingdom. Thus His relation to the Church was twofold, as Founder, and as Supreme Pastor. _Secondly_, the Church shares her Lord's prerogative of unchangeableness, and as He is "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," so She, His mystical Body, in her proportion, remains like herself from the beginning to the end. The Church and Christianity are bound to each other in a mutual relation; the Church is Christianity embodied; Christianity is the Church in conception: the consistency and identity which belong to Christianity belong likewise to her; neither can change their nature, nor put on another form. But, _thirdly_, the Church would be unlike herself, if, having been from her very cradle visibly administered by the rule of One, she fell subsequently, either under no rule at all, according to the doctrine of the Independents, or under the rule of the multitude, according to the Calvinists, or under the rule of an aristocracy, as Episcopalians imagine. A change of government superinduces a change of that substantial form which constitutes a society. But this holds in her case especially, above all other societies, as she came forth from the creative hand of her Lord, her whole organization instinct with inward life, her government _directly_ instituted by God Himself, in which lies her point of distinction from all temporal polities.