But the historic succession of Christians through the centuries is not our sole connection with Christ; we not only look back to Him, we also look up and look in to Him, for He lives above and in us.  The Church is not a widow, but a bride; and shares its Lord’s life in the world today.  The same Spirit who lived and ruled in the Church of the first days has been breathed on us, through the long line of apostolic-spirited men and women who reach back to Jesus, and lives and rules in us.  We must keep the unity of the Spirit with the believers of the past, and with all who are Spirit-led in the world today; and we must remember that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  We are not bound by the precedents of bygone centuries in our organization; we are free to take from the past what is of worth to us, and we are free to let the rest go.  Is not the Spirit of God as able to take materials at hand in our own age, and to use them for the government, the worship, the creed, the methods of the living Church of Christ?

We cannot, of course, be content with an unrealized unity of the Church.  Every little group of Christians, in the first age, felt itself the embodiment in its locality of the whole Church, and it was at one in effort with followers of Jesus everywhere.  It exercised hospitality towards every Christian who came within its neighborhood, welcoming him to its fellowship and expecting him to use his gifts in its communion.  We want the whole Body of Christ organized, so that it is vividly conscious of its unity, so that it does not waste its energy in maintaining needlessly separate churches, so that followers of Christ feel themselves welcome at every Table of the Lord, and every gifted leader, accredited in any part of the Church, is accepted as accredited in every other where he can be profitably used.  The practical problem in Church reorganization is identical with that which confronts society in politics and in industry—­how to secure efficient administration while safeguarding liberty, how to combine the solidarity of the group with the full expression of its members’ individualities.  To be effective the Church must work as a compactly ordered whole.  Individuals must surrender personal preferences in order that the Church may have collective force.  Teamwork often demands the suppression of individuality.  There will have to be sufficient authority lodged in those who exercise oversight to enable them to lead the Christian forces and administer their resources.  But we dare not curtail the freedom of conscience, or impede liberty of prophesying, or turn flexibility of organization into rigidity, lest we hamper the Spirit, who divideth to every man severally even as He will.  We do not want “metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,” but the personal convictions of thinking sons and daughters of the living God, the spontaneous and congenial fellowship of children with their Father in heaven, and methods