The laws of Christ, in accordance with which believers unite themselves into churches, may be summarized as follows: 1. the sufficiency and sole authority of Scripture as the rule both of doctrine and polity; (2) credible evidence of regeneration and conversion as prerequisite to church‐membership; (3) immersion only, as answering to Christ’s command of baptism, and to the symbolic meaning of the ordinance; (4) the order of the ordinance, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as of divine appointment, as well as the ordinances themselves; (5) the right of each member of the church to a voice in its government and discipline; (6) each church, while holding fellowship with other churches, solely responsible to Christ; (7) the freedom of the individual conscience, and the total independence of church and state. Hovey in his Restatement of Denominational Principles (Am. Bap. Pub. Society) gives these principles as follows: 1. the supreme authority of the Scriptures in matters of religion; 2. personal accountability to God in religion; 3. union with Christ essential to salvation; 4. a new life the only evidence of that union; 5. the new life one of unqualified obedience to Christ. The most concise statement of Baptist doctrine and history is that of Vedder, in Jackson’s Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, 1:74‐85. With the lax views of Scripture which are becoming common among us there is a tendency in our day to lose sight of the transcendent element in the church. Let us remember that the church is not a humanitarian organization resting upon common human brotherhood, but a supernatural body, which traces its descent from the second, not the first, Adam, and which manifests the power of the divine Christ. Mazzini in Italy claimed Jesus, but repudiated his church. So modern socialists cry: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and deny that there is need of anything more than human unity, development, and culture. But God has made the church to sit with Christ “_in the heavenly places_” (_Eph. 2:6_). It is the regeneration which comes about through union with Christ which constitutes the primary and most essential element in ecclesiology. “We do not stand, first of all, for restricted communion, nor for immersion as the only valid form of baptism, nor for any particular theory of Scripture, but rather for a regenerate church membership. The essence of the gospel is a new life in Christ, of which Christian experience is the outworking and Christian consciousness is the witness. Christian life is as important as conversion. Faith must show itself by works. We must seek the temporal as well as spiritual salvation of men, and the salvation of society also” (Leighton Williams).