Our Lord prayed for his people, “not that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be kept from the evil;” and we are never to expect to find them externally separate from the surrounding world. They will not be gathered together in separate states and villages; there will not be one village of unbelievers and another of believers; but there will be some of both classes every where. The tares will grow with the wheat, and the wheat with the tares. This appears very plainly from the prophecy of our Lord already referred to; “I tell you, In that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left;” Luke, xvii. 34–36. This passage describes the separation of God’s children from the world, or the gathering in of God’s elect; and the point which at present we would particularly observe is this, that up to the very crisis they are together in society, in the same bed, the same shop, the same field; there is no visible separation, no drawing off from the duties of common life; all are together to the very night of the advent. II. And we may remark, secondly, that the saints of God will not be _distinguished by any ecclesiastical system_. There is a natural craving in the human mind for something tangible and visible. Hence the origin of idolatry; men want to see the object of their worship, and so create for themselves an image. Hence also the craving after that which God has declared impossible, a visible church free from error; an outward form inseparable from inward grace; a pure, holy, spotless framework, which, excluding all others, shall embrace in its system the whole of God’s elect. But this second fiction is quite as impossible as the first, and there is no more expectation of seeing God’s elect embodied in a form than of seeing God himself represented in an image. {51} God’s children are a scattered family; scattered not merely as to place but as to discipline. In saying this we do not undervalue a Scriptural discipline, or regard episcopacy as a thing which may be set aside at pleasure: as we find it in the bible we give thanks also that we find it in our church. But what we mean is this, that God’s grace is not tied down to ecclesiastical machinery; that a true church cannot command it, a defective church cannot exclude it. None can bind the life-giving power of the Spirit.