more this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in
submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the
unity of the body? Consists it not in this,--that there is one life
uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and
the members fall to pieces: they are no longer one; decomposition
begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of
cohesion or union with the rest.

There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck
with the power there is in a single living influence. Have we never
for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites and holds
together a thousand men as if they were but one; with flashing eyes
and throbbing hearts, all attentive to his words, and by the
difference of their attitudes, by the variety of the expressions of
their countenances testifying to the unity of that single living
feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be indignation,
whether it be compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living
influence made the thousand for the time, one. Have we not heard how,
even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting
feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one,
when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the
edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one
cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this
manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the
mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the
desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness?
And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the
subjection to the one uniting spirit of its God.

It will be said, in reply to this, "Why this is mere enthusiasm. It
may be very beautiful in theory, but it is impossible in practice. It
is mere enthusiasm to believe, that while all these varieties of
conflicting opinion remain, we can have unity; it is mere enthusiasm
to think that so long as men's minds reckon on a thing like unity,
there can be a thing like oneness." And our reply is, Give us the
Spirit of God, and we shall be one. You cannot produce a unity by all
the rigour of your ecclesiastical discipline. You cannot produce a
unity by consenting in some form of expression such as this, "Let us
agree to differ." You cannot produce a unity by Pa