them; and yet the same family.
Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so
many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the
difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of
Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference
between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same
Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference
between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the
present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these
states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a
family.

There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their
mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first
separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for
after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions,
trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some
are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last--an old,
gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman--to mourn over the last
graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right
form--the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it
remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this,
or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the
feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when
all his religious system was broken up--the Temple service brought to
a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and
ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must
they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples,
when He was dead who they "trusted should have redeemed Israel?" In
both cases the body was gone or was altered--the spirit had arisen.

And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions
now. Institutions pass--churches alter--old forms change--and
high-minded and good men cling to these as if _they_ were the only
things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears
to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott--comparing the degeneracy of
their descendants with the men of those days--lose heart, as if all
things were going wr