I. THE MORAL LIMIT OF ITS POWER.

In the prophetic announcement of the failure of the Church which has come to us from the Lord's own lips in the addresses to the seven churches, if the root of decline is found, as it surely is, in Ephesus,-"Thou hast left thy first love,"-the formal principle of it is no less plain in Smyrna, where those are who "say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." The introduction of Jewish principles into the Church of God was that which prepared the way for clerisy, ritualism, and in due course, Romanism itself. I am not now going into the proof of this :it scarcely needs for those for whom I am at present writing. So rapid was the descent, in fact, that the Church of the New Testament never appears as such on the pages of merely human history; and ritualism appeals with confidence and success to the whole body of so-called "fathers" in its own behalf.

If, then, in the mercy of God, we have been in any measure delivered from the corruption and oppression of so many centuries,-if we have got back behind Nicene and pre-Nicene conceptions to the apostles and the apostolic Church itself, what should we expect but to find the same dangers before us which were before them, and developing only much more rapidly at the end than at the beginning, and amid the rapid developments of such a day as this?

It need not surprise us, therefore, (though it should awaken the most earnest self-inquiry,) to find in the address to Philadelphia the next reference to those who "say they are Jews and are not." If Philadelphia be in its very name an assurance that in the return of heart to Christ which is there marked there is a return of heart also to the fellowship of saints, the brotherhood of Christians, there is with this revival of true Church-feeling the revival of the old Jewish ritualistic assumptions :the New-Testament conception of the Church is again opposed by the traditional conception.

As a fact, nothing is more certain than that there has been such a revival of late years. If the Spirit of God has been drawing men to own the unity of his own producing, there has arisen in the very bosom of Protestantism what has been vaunted as the great Catholic revival, the impulse of return to unity of another type. The fact cannot be doubted :surely its significance cannot be for those who are hearing, or have an ear to hear, " what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

It will be said, and rightly, that the assurance is given to the Philadelphians, "I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie,-behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."

While that is true, the need of overcoming, even in Philadelphia, must be seriously weighed, as well as the danger of not holding fast what they have, that no man take their crown. Is not this very Jewish revival a danger they are called to overcome ?-a danger specially pointed out, indeed, into which they may slip, and must be careful not to slip ?

Notice, what has been often remarked upon, the way in which the Lord speaks of Himself to Philadelphia as " He that is holy, He that is true," in opposition to the hollow-ness of ecclesiastical pretension. Those to whom He speaks have kept His word, not the church's; and it is this, just this, that constitutes them Philadelphia. They " follow righteousness, love, faith, peace," and thus find their company with those who "call on the Lord out of a pure heart." Their fellowship is true because it is in the truth. They are united by the center, not by the outside. They are held fast by the conscience no less than by the heart,-that conscience which is the divine throne in man, and may need enlightenment, but never repression.

These are needful remarks in commencing an inquiry as to the power of the assembly, and the limits of that sanction of its actions by the Lord, " Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." Limit there must be, clearly,-some limit:otherwise, we shall be landed in Rome inevitably. And it is just in the uncertainty as to the limit that ecclesiastical pretension finds its opportunity, and the consciences of the saints are brought under its power. The whole of this address to Philadelphia is most helpful here.

For certainly the Lord has never delegated to the Church His rights over the conscience. If the Church is still "men," it will always be in order to quote as to it, " We ought to obey God rather than men " (Acts 5:29). There is always the possibility that the voice of man may not represent to us the voice of God, and that obedience to the one may be impossible to unite with obedience to the other. Absolute authority there can be nowhere, except where there is infallibility as well,-that is, with God, and not man. Nor does this set aside authority ; it only limits it.

"The powers that be are ordained of God." Here, therefore, my own will must give way, and " he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God." Yet the simple, direct, authority of God remains intact in its supremacy for my soul. There is no possible case in which duty to Him simply can be in collision with duty to Him in the power that represents Him. If I have His Word defining such and such a thing as evil, it can never be rightly a question for my conscience whether I ought to obey man in that. "The knowledge of the holy is" still "understanding;" and the dictates of that holiness are as simply to control me as if there were no delegated authority whatever existing. God nowhere, at no time, resigns the authority that He bestows on men ; no shadow of intervening power is to darken the light of His presence in which we are called to walk continually.

So with the authority of a father precisely:"Children, obey your parents in the Lord," is no license to transgress the commandments of the Lord in so doing. No one can suppose so whose judgment could be respected for a moment.

Now the principle remains the same, if we substitute the Church for the father or the magistrate. You may say the Church is indwelt by, the Holy Ghost, or that where two or three are gathered to His name Jesus is in the midst. It is true ; but He is not there to give sanction to what is not of Him,-to bind at the voice of His people what with His own voice He would condemn as evil. This would be to upset the first principles of truth and godliness,-to drag the divine honor in the dust,-to make God the Author of evil; and the direct result would be to justify in a certain class of cases those who say, " Let us do evil that good may come ;" " whose damnation," says the apostle, "is just" (Rom. 3:8).

Indeed, it might seem wholly unnecessary to insist upon this. It is, one would say, self-evident. To question it is to blur all lines of moral distinction, and to confuse the whole spiritual sight. Is it no more to be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether" (Ps. 19:9) ? Nor is it here possible to make a distinction between unrighteousness intended, and a mistaken judgment merely:"the judgments of the Lord are true" as well as " righteous," and " righteous altogether" not merely in intention!

Few are the assemblies, we may hope, of even " two or three " gathered to Christ's name, where unrighteousness in what they did could be deliberately intended. Fewer still would be the cases in which a deliberate intention of this kind could be proved against any. To judge what is in the heart is beyond us, except as it may be necessarily involved in the life and ways. It is as to what is in the heart that the Lord says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged " (Matt. 7:i). And the deceitfulness of the heart is nowhere perhaps more shown than in its power of disguising from ourselves the character of our actions. Certainly, if mistaken judgments are to escape the brand of unrighteousness on this plea, there will be few assembly-acts that can be pronounced unrighteous. If, for instance, only where one whom they know to be innocent they condemn as guilty can there be the guilt of condemning the innocent, we may practically dismiss the thought of such unrighteousness from the mind. It would be sin against love to suspect so great a crime. "From this all would shrink," says the one who furnishes the illustration. True; and if all other acts are to be considered righteous, where may we expect to find the unrighteous ones?

Practically, there maybe abundance of unrighteousness short of this:a thing of which the Lord acquits His murderers:" Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do ! " " Had they known it," says the apostle (i Cor. 2:8), "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Yet, were He not the Lord of glory, He would have been rightly condemned.

No :to condemn the innocent is unrighteousness, whatever the vail over the eyes of those who do it. These " mistakes " come from a spiritual cause, and have consequences also which no sincerity on the part of those who make them can avert. The God of truth and righteousness cannot "bind in heaven " the blunders of men on earth, nor set His seal upon injustice. This is, in the nature of things, impossible. He cannot put evil for good, or darkness for light, or bitter for sweet, or compel my assent to this, when He has pronounced a solemn woe upon those who do so. (Is. 5:20.)

Nothing, however, blurs the moral perception like ecclesiasticism:an unmistakable proof of its evil nature; and of which Rome's tariff for sin is only the ripe manifestation. Any thought of God's binding me to treat as right what I know to be wrong is of the same order as the Romish indulgences. Of course, if I do not know, I dare not act as if I did. It would be itself unrighteousness to characterize as unrighteousness what I did not know to be such. If I may be mistaken, all right to wait until am sure. But if I am really sure, I am responsible to God to act according to my knowledge, let the assembly or ever so many assemblies say what they will.

It will be answered that this is to make authority to depend upon infallibility, and that to reject it on this ground is lawlessness. Has, then, the church authority to define for me what is good or evil? Must I, with the father of Jesuitism, pronounce black what I see to be white, if the church so define it ? From no other quarter can we obtain sanction for maxims so profane. There is a range within which there may still be found sufficient room to own authority; but to compel my obedience to evil in the name of God and good, the church had never authority, and the claim of it would be itself an evil to be rejected with abhorrence.
These are as yet only first principles. The question remains, how they are to be carried out in a given case; but before considering this, we have to look at a number of other questions. Only this far have we reached at present, that " whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" must be taken with the reserve that evil cannot be bound in heaven, and that whether the evil be intentional or not does not in the least affect this, though it affects immensely the gravity of the case for those concerned in it. Power to bind evil the church has not.

(To be continued.)