fe and power through the obedience of faith, it manifests to the
world the Name of the Lord, the goodness and the glory of Him who
called its members from darkness into His marvellous Light. Wherever
such a Church is gathered, there also is Christ, its Head, who governs
it, teaches it, guards and defends it, works in it and pours His Life
into its members, to each according to the measure of his living faith.
This inward invisible Christ belongs to all ages and all times and
lands."[32] The Church, in its true life and power, is thus for him a
continuation of the apostolic type. He had no interest in the
formation of a sectarian denomination, and he was fundamentally averse
to a State-Church system. The true Church community can be identified
with no temporal, empirical organization--whether established or
separatist. It is a spiritual invisible community as wide as the
world, including all persons in all regions of {79} the earth and in
all religious communions who are joined in life and spirit to the
Divine Head. It expands and is enlarged by a process of organic growth
under the organizing direction of the Holy Spirit. "As often," he
writes, "as a new warrior comes to the heavenly army, as often as a
poor sinner repents, the body of Christ becomes larger, the King more
splendid, His Kingdom stronger, His might more perfect. Not that God
becomes greater or more perfect in His essence, but that flesh becomes
more perfect in God, and God dwells in all His fulness in the flesh
into which in Jesus Christ He ever more pours Himself."[33] Each soul
that enters the _kingdom of experience_ through the work of the
Life-giving Spirit is builded into this invisible expanding Church of
the ages, and is endowed with some "gift" to become an organ of the
Divine Head. All spiritual service arises through the definite call
and commission of God, and the persons so called and commissioned are
rightly prepared for their service, not by election and ordination, but
by inward compulsion and illumination through the Word of God. The
preacher possesses no magical efficacy. His only power lies in his
spiritual experience, his clarified vision, and his organic connection
with Christ the Head of the Church and the source of its energy. If
his life is spiritually poor and weak and thin, if it lacks moral
passion and insight, his ministry will be correspondingly ineffective
and futile, for the dynamic spiritual impact of a life is in