The Church is no democracy, any more than it is an aristocracy or a sacerdotal absolutism: it is a _Christocracy_. The people are not rulers in the house of God; they are the ruled, laity and ministers alike. “One is your Master, even the Christ; and all ye are brethren.” We acknowledge this in theory; but our language and spirit would oftentimes be other than they are, if we were penetrated by the sense of the continual presence and majesty of the Lord Christ in our assemblies. Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose “names are named in this world,” along with the principalities in heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must lay aside their robes and forget their titles, and speak humbly as in the Master’s presence. What is it to the glorious Church of Jesus Christ that Lord So-and-so wears a coronet and owns half a county? or that Midas can fill her coffers, if he is pleased and humoured? or that this or that orator guides at his will the fierce democracy? He is no more than a man who will die, and appear before the judgement-seat of Christ. The Church’s protection from human tyranny, from schemes of ambition, from the intrusion of political methods and designs, lies in her sense of the splendour and reality of Christ’s dominion, and of her own eternal life in Him. III. We come now to the profound mystery disclosed, or half-disclosed at the end of this section, that of _the origination of the Church from Christ_, which accounts for His love to the Church and His authority over her. He nourishes and cherishes the Church, we are told in verses 29, 30, “because we are members of His body.” Now, this membership is, in its origin, as old as creation. God “chose us in Christ before the world’s foundation” (i. 4). We were created in the Son of God’s love, antecedently to our redemption by Him. Such is the teaching of this and the companion epistle (Col. i. 14-18). Christ recovers through the cross that which pertains inherently to Him, which belonged to Him by nature and is as a part of Himself. From this standpoint the connexion of verses 30 and 31 becomes intelligible.[145] It is not, strictly speaking, “on account of this”; but “in correspondence with this”[146] says the apostle, suiting the original phrase to his purpose. The derivation of Eve from the body of Adam, as that is affirmed in the mysterious words of Genesis, is analogous to the derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, prior to the appearance of the human race. In St Paul’s theory, the origin of woman in man which forms the basis of marriage in Scripture, looked further back to the origin of humanity in Christ Himself.