No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which our reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and striking manner a want which is most true and real, although it proposes an impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should have intended us to live wholly by faith in this world? That is, Can it have been his will that all visible signs of himself should be withdrawn from us; and that we should be left only with the record and the evidence of his mighty works done in our behalf in past times; and with that other evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of his creation? We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his will. We were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen world, there the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of Christ's resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the evidence of Christ's having redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of the past; he purposed that there should be a living record, a record that might speak to our senses as well as to our reason; that should continually present us with impressions of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so might work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we breathe. This living witness, which should last till Christ came again, was to be no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church.