the autopsy.  Others still would make of the church a great railroad system, over which sleeping-cars run from the City of Destruction, with a coupon good to admit one to the Golden City at the other end.  The coaches are luxurious and the road-bed smooth.  The Slough of Despond has been filled, the Valley of Humiliation bridged at its narrowest point, and the Delectable Mountains tunnelled.  But scoffers say that most of the passengers make full use of the unlimited stop-over privileges allowed at Vanity Fair.

The Bible would seem to give the impression that the church is the army of the Lord of Hosts, a disciplined army of hardy, heroic souls, each soldier aiding his fellow in working out the salvation which God is working in him.  And it joins battle fiercely and fearlessly with every form of sin and misery, counting not the odds against it.  And the Salvation Army seems to me to have conceived and realized to a great extent just what at least one corps in this grand army can and should be.  And you and I can learn many a lesson from them.

The church is the body of which Christ is the head, and you and I are “members in particular.”  Let us see to it that we are not the weak spot in the body, crippling and maiming the whole.  The church is the city of God among men, and we are its citizens, bound by its laws, loyal servants of the Great King, sworn to obey his commands and enlarge his kingdom, and repel all the assaults of his adversaries.  Thus the Bible seems to me to depict the church of God.  But what if the army contains a multitude of men who will not obey orders or submit to discipline? or if the city be overwhelmed with a mass of aliens, who see in its laws and institutions mainly means of selfish individual advantage?  Responsibility, not privilege, is the foundation of strong character in both men and institutions.  There was a good grain of truth in the old Scotch minister’s remark, that they had had a blessed work of grace in his church; they had not taken anybody in, but a lot had gone out.

There are plenty of churches of Laodicea to-day.  May you be delivered from them.  But, thank God, there are also churches of Philadelphia and Smyrna.  May you be pastors of one of the latter.  It will not pay you a very large salary, for Demas has gone to the church of Laodicea, because the minister of the church of Smyrna was not orthodox, or not sufficiently spiritually minded—­meaning thereby that he rebuked the sins of actual living men in general, and of Demas in particular—­or preached politics, and did not mind his business.  And your church may be small.  For many of the congregation have gone to the church around the other corner, which is mainly a cluster of associations, having excellent names, and useful for almost every purpose except building up a manly, rugged, heroic, godlike character.  The minister there, they will tell you, preaches delightful sermons.  They make you “feel so good.”  He annihilates pantheism, and his denunciations of