There is “one body and one Spirit”: one body because, and so far as there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body’s shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it, however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ, and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and the furniture that are about it? “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in God’s dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced without loss and peril. Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle, it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to walk with His people. He “loved the world”; and we must love it, or we displease Him. “This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God love his brother also.”