How totally different is the precious and most refreshing institution of the Lord's Supper, as set before us in the New Testament. There we find the bread broken, and the wine poured out--the significant symbols of a body broken, and of blood shed. The wine is not in the bread, because the blood is not in the body, for, if it were, there would be "no remission." In a word, the Lord's Supper is the distinct memorial of an eternally accomplished sacrifice; and none can communicate thereat, with intelligence or blessing, save those who know the full remission of sins. It is not that we would, by any means, make knowledge a term of communion, for very many of the children of God, through bad teaching, and various other causes, do not know the perfect remission of sins, and were they to be excluded on that ground, it would be making _knowledge_ a term of communion, instead of _life_ and _obedience_. Still, if I do not know, experimentally, that redemption is an accomplished fact, I shall see but little meaning in the symbols of bread and wine; and, moreover, I shall be in great danger of attaching a species of efficacy to the memorials, which belongs only to the great reality to which they point. [XVII.] I can only feel myself responsible to present myself in the assembly when it is gathered on proper Church ground, i. e., the ground laid down in the New Testament. People may assemble, and call themselves the Church of God, in any given locality, but if they do not exhibit the characteristic features and principles of the Church of God as set forth in Holy Scripture, I cannot own them. If they refuse, or lack spiritual power, to judge worldliness, carnality, or false doctrine, they are evidently not on proper Church ground: they are merely a religious fraternity, which, in its collective character, I am in no wise responsible before God to own. Hence the child of God needs much spiritual power, and subjection to the Word, to be able to carry himself through all the windings of the professing Church in this peculiarly evil and difficult day. THE ASSEMBLY OF GOD OR, THE ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF THE NAME OF JESUS In a day like the present, when almost every new idea becomes the centre or gathering-point of some new association, we cannot but feel the value of having divinely formed convictions as to what the assembly of God really is. We live in a time of unusual mental activity, and hence there is the more urgent need of calm and prayerful study of the word of God. That Word, blessed be its Author, is like a rock amid the ocean of human thought. There it stands unmoved, notwithstanding the raging of the storm and the ceaseless lashing of the waves. And not only does it thus stand unmoved itself, but it imparts its own stability to all who simply take their stand upon it. What a mercy to make one's escape from the heavings and tossings of the stormy ocean, and find a calm resting place on that everlasting Rock.