establishment and extension of the kingdom of God among men. A
secondary object was the encouragement and mutual edification of the
believers themselves, which was best obtained by united worship in
prayer, exhortation, praise, thanksgiving, and religious instruction.

We have already noted the conditions of membership in the local
church. None but those who were already members of the body of Christ
could properly be recognized as members in a congregation which was
designed by Christ to exhibit in local and temporary form the
true idea of the church universal. According to this standard of
membership, every individual owed allegiance directly to Christ
himself as the great head of the church. Christ was the only lawgiver.
The relation of the individual to the local church, then, did not
in any sense supersede his personal relations to Christ, but simply
strengthened and further expressed this higher relationship.

In this standard of church-membership is found the secret of the union
in one body of all apostolic Christians. The standard was _personal
relationship to Christ_, and this relationship could be obtained
only by an experience of salvation and humble obedience to the law
of Christ. Therefore all the truly saved were members of Christ and
members of each other. This standard being the same for all, it led
to absolute equality among members. Hence Paul could say, "There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is
neither male nor female: for ye are all one _in Christ Jesus_" (Gal.
3:28).

The law of the church, as already stated, was simply "the law of
Christ"; first as delivered orally by specially inspired apostles, and
afterwards expressed by them in the Christian Scriptures.

[Sidenote: Organization and government]

The closest relationship necessarily existed between the organization
of the church and its method of government. It is impossible for us
to get a clear conception of either independently of the other; and
in order to understand the subject at all, we must bear in mind the
fundamental nature of the church itself, what it was and what it was
designed to accomplish. The church was not, as we have seen, a mere
aggregate of individuals that happened to gather or that assembled for
ordinary purposes. A social club or a business organization would have
possessed all those features. The church was the body of Christ, the
body to which he gave spiritual life and through whi