Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is our highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love than to our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its triumph our triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then, that church questions are not such merely, or principally, as concern the payment of the clergy, or their discipline, but all questions in which God's glory and man's sins or duties are concerned; all questions in the decision of which, there is a moral good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or a conformity to him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the more narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of others, but take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we have opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns ourselves. We feel that we have an interest in our country's affairs, although we are not members of the government or of the legislature; we have our part to perform, without at all overstepping the modesty of private life: and it is the constant influence of public opinion, and the active interest taken by the country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of occasional delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to us the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And so, if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing which tended to its welfare, and to put down and prevent every thing which might work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there would then be no danger of our investing them with the duties and responsibilities which belong properly to the whole church; they could not then have dominion over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of our joy, the glory of Christ. LECTURE XXXIX. * * * * * COLOSSIANS iii. 17. _Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him_.