+III. The means and conditions of its growth+ (vers. 15, 16).--To the craft of false teachers St. Paul would have his Churches oppose the weapons only of truth and love. Sincere believers, heartily devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life instinctively repels disease. Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of advancement--the full recognition of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. He is the perfect ideal for each, the common source of life and progress for all. He is the Head of the Church and the heart of the world. Another practical condition of Church growth is organization--"all the body fitly framed and knit together." A building or a machine is fitted together by the adjustment of its parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive life, a sympathetic force, knitting it together. And so it is in love that this body of the Church builds up itself. The perfect Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them requires the other for its due realisation. The primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through the tissues and substance of the entire frame.--_Findlay._ Vers. 13-15. _Christian Manhood._ +I. Christian manhood is a growth.+--1. A growth having its inception in the simple fact of becoming a Christian. This is a decided advance upon the most moral and cultivated state otherwise attainable. It involves the quickening into a new life which is to grow. 2. A growth marking a continual advancement till we all come in the unity--the respect in which one grows--the union, conjunction of faith and of knowledge. 3. A growth resulting from culture under Divinely appointed agencies. The most splendid growth, other things being equal, is the result of the highest culture. The highest culture is possible only through the most rigid conformity to the laws of development and the appliance of the best agencies. 4. A growth the standard of whose completeness is the fulness of Christ. The stature--the adultness, the full-grown manhood of Christ--is the standard of growth, whose attainment is the Christian's noblest zeal. +II. The elements of Christian manhood.+--1. _Largeness_--in the Christian's views of truth, of man's need, of Christ's work, of schemes and plans for its greater furtherance. 2. _Dignity._--That deep, inwrought sense of the true worth and greatness of his nature, as a renewed man, and of his position as a child of God and joint-heir with Christ. Christian ethics are the best ethics; highest, purest, noblest, safest. He lives by these naturally who has a well-developed Christian manhood. 3. _Courageousness and strength._--Courage makes a man put forth his best strength, while strength enables courage to achieve its best deeds. +III. The outworking of Christian manhood.+--It gives:--