ong. "Things are not," they say, "as they were in
our younger days." No my Christian brethren, things are not as they
then were; but the Christian cause lives on--not in the successors of
such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is
elsewhere, is risen--risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest
Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old
superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of
the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot
separate her affection from that form--those hands, those limbs, those
features--are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not
there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn
over the decay of those institutions--the change of human forms--as it
was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the
decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the
noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary--the shadow of
those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life--lived on:
Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change--all things outward
change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of
God remains under fresh forms--the one, holy, entire family in heaven
and earth.

II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which
this Church is named. "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Apostle says, "of
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."

Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and
expression, will allow here, that _name_ is but another word to
express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to
know the character and nature of Jehovah, he said--"Tell me now, I
beseech thee, thy _name_". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is _named_," it
is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church
depends--Who has given it substantive existence--without Whom it could
not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed
elsewhere--"that there is none other name under heaven given among
men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague
generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can
be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
clea