This, at least, is sure. Constrained by the laws of an imperious love, God gave Himself to bring what all His messengers had failed to convey. Clothed in that very flesh which once by sin had died, Christ stood in personal relations to mankind, His hand in theirs, His eyes to their eyes, His mouth to their mouth; and lo! beneath His personal contact there began to glow again the warmth of pristine life which once had burned in Eden, when God and man held free and undiverted commerce. And then Christ filled up full with all its spiritual meaning that final action of the Syrian prophet which had seemed to be so simple and so natural. For, ere He left the arena where He had proved Himself to be the Conqueror of death, Christ called forth the Church which He had formed, and He bade it tend the life which He had reimplanted in the hearts of men, accompanying the mighty commission with a plenary promise of abiding power: "Shepherd my sheep; feed my lambs: lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Uniformity of action in every position, mechanical exactness in every class of work, whether you evangelize under frozen climes or torrid zones, whether you preach to polished Eastern intellects or instruct the degraded savage, is neither to be expected nor yet to be desired. The religion that becomes mechanical always stops itself. But within the lines of her commission the Church of God is bound to show in practise that she can touch all hearts, enlist all sympathies, influence all lives, gather up into her ample bosom all whom the Master loves; just as a mother folds to her heart the entire members of her family, irrespective of their diversity of tastes, habits, and mode of life, nay, even in spite of their failings, and often of their sins, and beneath the loving sympathy of that loving embrace all know instinctively that they have each their own peculiar place within the many mansions of the widely loving heart. We are living in an age of development. Within old bottles it is certain new wine is beginning to ferment, and elemental forces gather for the strife. Life implies assimilation; assimilation means union of powers, or new energies rising out of such combinations. In early days the Church of Christ assimilated the life, the teachings, the powers around her, casting out the false, ennobling the true; and she became the living force to which the history of the world bears testimony. And what does all this teach us? Even that as a mother adapts herself to the varying characters displayed by her children in her wise government of the family, so must the Church of England in all her work take up her son into her bosom, teaching the good and enforcing the true, yet adapting her methods to win wisely, to win surely, to establish a lasting yet a spiritual dominion.