e visible Church for all ages. There neither is nor can be any other
true Church. It is essentially a Church managed, maintained, and
governed through "gifts" bestowed by the Holy Spirit, and in this Church
each spiritual member takes his part according to the measure of his
special "gift." This pattern Church, however, {121} _fell away_ and
became corrupted after the death of the apostles, and instead of this
glorious Church an external Church was established, claiming to possess
authoritative officials, saving sacraments, and infallible doctrines, but
really lacking the inward power of the apostolic Church, no longer
following and imitating Christ, on the contrary adopting the world's way
and the world's type of authority, and destitute of the very mark and
essence of real Christianity, _the spirit of love_. Through all the
apostasy of the visible Church, however, an invisible Church has survived
and preserved the eternal ideal. It consists of all those, in whatever
ages and lands, who have lived by their faith in Christ, have kept
themselves pure and stainless in the midst of a sinful world, have
practised love, even when they have received the buffets of hate, have
lived above division and schism and sect, and have steadily believed that
their names were written in heaven and that their Church was visible to
God, even though none on earth called them brother, or recognized their
membership in the body of Christ. Some time, in God's good time, that
invisible Church, which no apostasy has annulled or destroyed, will
become once again a visible Church, equipped with "gifted" teachers and
with apostolic leaders as at the first, beautiful once more as a bride
adorned for her husband, and powerful again as the irresistible sword of
the Spirit.

But the Reformers--Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and even Menno Simons--have
taken an unwarranted course toward the reform and restoration of the
Church. It was within their right and power to _improve_ the unbearable
condition of the outward Church, by faithfully following the plain
teaching of the New Testament, and without usurping authority. They,
however, have not been satisfied to do what lay within the narrow limits
of their commission. They have ambitiously undertaken to set up again an
authoritative visible Church, even though they lacked the gifts of the
Spirit for it, and were without the necessary apostolic commission. They
insisted on their form of sacraments as es