Group life with a strong fellowship about it has always been a Quaker characteristic. In the early days it was groups of Seekers who embraced the message of Fox, and in England we still find Friends settled in groups over the country. I notice, in the expansion of Quakerism in the far West, that it is colonies of Friends you get. You cannot have a diffused Quakerism diffused over the whole State of Nebraska or California, but you can have a few groups of Friends at particular points. But group life means a great deal more than the collection of persons within the four walls of a particular building. It means a life in community and comradeship, because the members are joined together actually and vitally in a common Lord and a common discipleship. It means, as with the limbs of the body, that the gifts and activities of each are freely used for the service of the whole. It means that each shares in and contributes to the larger life of the whole. Then there is the need for loving service. A Church is not an end in itself, not a club where we sit at ease in Zion; it is a means to an end. It ought to be, in the phrase of our early Friends, a “camp of the Lord.” It needs to have the purposes of the Kingdom of God ringing in its ears all the time. It needs to be vowed to the great redemptive work of seeking and saving the lost. It will be rightly judged by its output of service for the Kingdom of God. I fancy that the weakness of modern Christianity is very similar to the besetting weakness of civilization. We grasp our privileges and shirk our responsibilities. The healthy Church fixes each member with personal responsibility for using the life which he has received. It finds work for all to do. It knows that activity is the natural expression of life, and that the torpor of any part spells atrophy and death. Last of my list is what I have called steady, spiritual growth. The vital relations which are the wealth of the Church not only bring about a unity of life with God and with one another, but produce that progressive development of personality that we call growth. These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves all the time: Are our church members bigger men and women inwardly than a year ago? Are they stronger in faith, more radiant in hope, warmer in love? Have their spiritual senses developed? Do they see more of truth, hear more readily the Divine voice, respond more quickly to the guidance of the Spirit? Are their consciences alert, their loins girt, their hands eager for sacrifice and service? Here surely is what we may call the intensive work of the Church, the making of men and women not after the pattern of the world, but after the pattern of Jesus Christ, who shall go forth in His power and spirit to serve the Kingdom of God.