but a few years.  Nor is it reasonable to suppose that forms which were suited to little groups of people meeting in somebody’s house, waiting for their Lord’s return, will answer for great bodies of Christians organizing themselves to Christianize the world.  No institution can remain changeless in a changing world.  “The one immutable factor in institutions,” writes Professor Pollard, “is their infinite mutability.”  Almost all the divisive factors in Christendom are taken out of the past, by those who claim that a certain polity or creed or practice is that authoritatively prescribed for all time, by Christ Himself, or by His Spirit through His personally appointed apostles.  The chief question for the Church to decide, when it considers its organization, is—­What must we carry on from the past, and what can we profitably leave behind?

The Church of Christ has always been and is one undivided living organism, composed of those who are so vitally joined to Jesus Christ that they share His life with God and men.  Our bodies are continually changing in their constituent elements, but remain the same bodies; the spirit of life assimilates and builds into its living structure that which enters the body.  The Church of Christ in the world is constantly changing its components as the generations come and go; each new generation is in some respects unlike its predecessor in thought, in usage, in feeling; but the continuity of the Spirit maintains the identity of the Body of Christ.  We must carry forward the Spirit of Christ, and keep unbroken the apostolic succession of spiritual men and women, all of whom are divinely appointed priests unto God.  We must realize that, as members in the Body of Christ, each of us must fulfil some function for the Kingdom, or we are not living members, but paralyzed or atrophied.  There is a continuity of life in the Church that cannot be interrupted; we must inherit this life from the past, and we must pass it on to those who come after us.  Just as the first Christians felt themselves the Israel of God, so today we are conscious of being the heirs of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, churchmen and scholars and missionaries, leaders of spiritual awakenings like Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley, theologians like Clement, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, and of countless humble and devoted believers who have been ruled by the Spirit of the Master.  They have bequeathed to us a solemn trust; they have enriched us with a priceless heritage; they have transmitted to us their life with Christ in God.  The Church comes to us saying: 

    I am like a stream that flows,
  Full of the cold springs that arose
    In morning lands, in distant hills;
    And down the plain my channel fills,
  With melting of forgotten snows.