nd in every age, in all churches, but not in every separate man.
So, at least, Paul has taught us, "Till we _all_ come"--_collectively_
not separately--"in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a perfect man"--in other words, to a perfect
_Humanity_--"unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ."

3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the
Church of Christ is a society which is for ever shifting its locality,
and altering its forms. It is the _whole_ church, "the _whole_ family
in heaven and earth." So then, those who were on earth, and are now in
heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their
home here, now have it there.

Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is
this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the
departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in
which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past,
belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which
they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part
of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their
character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible
for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from
day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each
other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's
character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a
hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how
all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence.
Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken.
Think you that family can break or end?--that because the chair is
empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the
coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye
of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is
risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So
at least the parental heart of David felt of old, "by faith and not by
sight," when speaking of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he
shall not return to me."

Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and
changing its external forms. "The _whole_ family"--the Church of the
Patriarchs, and of ages before