In order to realise this we must not confine our thoughts to our own personal enjoyment of our own sacred privileges. We may come to the Lord’s table as individuals, and find in the sacred feast such “a strengthening and refreshing of our souls” as may be to us the most conclusive and satisfactory evidence of the certain reality of the grace of God; but our personal experience would be no evidence to others, and our own enjoyment would not be regarded by the sceptic as a proof; it would be evidence to ourselves, but not to him, nor to the world at large. We must therefore take a wider range, and consider only such evidence as lies within the cognizance of all observing men. For this reason I have selected their position in the Church of Christ at this present time. I am not about to ask you to consider past history, but present facts; facts that may be tested by every one, facts belonging to this enlightened nineteenth century; and what I ask you to do is quietly and patiently to investigate facts. Taking then our standpoint in this year of our Lord, 1883, we find that the Church of Christ has been extending for just 1850 years, and that throughout that time it has been spread by countless agents, and in countless manners, in every direction throughout the world. Starting as it did from Palestine, it has now taken root on every continent, and it has borne the sacred Name of our blessed Saviour into every quarter of the globe. But while there has been this world-wide spread of Christianity, and while there is at this present time this widely-extended acknowledgment of the Name of the Lord Jesus, it is at the same time perfectly obvious that there are within the Church of the baptized immense diversities both of creed and practice. There are different Churches standing aloof from each other. There is the Church of Rome in conflict with what is called the Greek Church on the one hand, and with us Protestants on the other. What is commonly called the Greek Church consists again of many branches, or is rather an aggregate of many independent Churches not united under any one head. There is the original Greek Church, the Russian, the Syrian, the Coptic, and the Abyssinian. So in the Church of Rome there are various orders, besides the great division between the secular and regular clergy; while we all know, to our heartfelt sorrow, how those who are united in their love for the great Scriptural principles of Protestant truth are still divided into various denominations. Thus, looking at the Church of Christ as a whole, we find it spread into so many places that it encircles the world; and broken up into so many sections that it is hard to trace what we may term any visible corporate union. There is separation as to place, and divergence as to Church organisation.