us for the age, he took his seat in the church,
the temple of God, there to rule and to administer till the Lord
returns. There is but one "Holy See" upon earth: that is, the seat of
the Holy One in the church, which only the Spirit of God can occupy
without the most daring blasphemy. It becomes all true believers to
look well to that picture of one "sitting in the temple of God," and to
read the lesson which it teaches. We may have no temptation toward the
papacy, which thrusts a man into the seat of the Holy Ghost,[1] or
toward clerisy which obtrudes an order of ecclesiastics--archbishops,
cardinals, and archdeacons into that sacred place; but let us remember
that a democracy may be guilty of the same sin as a hierarchy, in
settling solemn issues by a "show of hands," instead of prayerfully
waiting for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in substituting the voice
of a {132} majority for the voice of the Spirit. Of course, in
speaking thus we concede that the Holy Spirit makes known his will in
the voice of believers, as also in the voice of Scripture. Only there
must be such prayerful sanctifying of the one and such prayerful search
of the other, that in reaching decisions in the church there may be the
same declaration as in the first Christian council: "It seemed good to
the Holy Ghost and to us" (Acts 15: 28).

In some very profound teaching in 2 Cor. 3 we seem to have a hint as to
how we hear the voice of the Lord in guiding the affairs of the church.
There, the administration (_diachonia_) of the Spirit is distinctly
spoken of in contrast with the administration of the law. Its
deliverances are written "not with ink, not in tables of stone, but in
the tables that are the hearts of flesh, with the Spirit of the living
God" (R. V.). There must be a sensitive heart wherein this handwriting
may be inscribed; an unhindering will through which he may act. "Where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," it is written in the same
passage; liberty for God to speak and act as he will through us, which
begets loyalty; not liberty for us to act as we will, which begets
lawlessness.

To us there is something exceedingly suggestive in the teaching of the
Lord's post-ascension gospel, the Revelation, on this point. The
epistles to the {133} seven churches we hold, with many of the best
commentators, to be a prophetic setting forth of the successive stages
of the church's history--its declines and its recoveries, it