Do we appreciate God's present purpose in that the chief and great object now before Him is the formation of that company which shall fill the nearest and highest place in relationship and fellowship with His blessed Son for all eternity?

This purpose, hid from all past ages, but now revealed by the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul, is central to all God's present activity in grace through the gospel, and should be central in the hearts and lives of God's people as they witness for Christ while they await His coming again. It has at this time first place in the mind of God, and should have in ours.

This purpose is intimately related to the glory of Christ as Head over all things; but more, it is intimately bound up with His affections, with the|infinite love of His heart. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it. Each believer can say, "He loved me and gave Himself for me;" but He loved the Church-the whole company as such-the one Body, His Body, of which every believer since the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is a member, a member of Christ. Wonderful calling!

Of this calling we are to walk worthy. To do so we must have an understanding of it and enjoy its blessedness. We must enter into what Christ's thoughts are about His Body, we must have an appreciation of His desires concerning it. That means that we will have fellowship with Him regarding this object so near and dear to His heart. Such things it is the Spirit's delight to minister to us, for He came to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us. This He now does through the completed Word of God, and as we occupy ourselves with it, having Christ before heart and mind, the Spirit will lead us into the fellowship of God's Son. Precious intimacy by which He becomes to us a glorious, bright reality, truly the living One. One fears that for many Christians the Lord is too impersonal, almost vague and shadowy, instead of a living Person who desires to abide with them and manifest Himself to them. He would not have it so with any one whom He loved. The matter rests with us:are we content to have it so? "If any man love Me, he will keep My word." Therein lies the secret of the door of the heart being open for Him, that He may come in to dwell and sup with you and you with Him. But then that heart will be closed to what is not agreeable to Him, while it will be set upon what is nearest and dearest to His heart.

He has set Himself apart for us-for the Church, to now serve it in love in view of the glorious day of presentation when, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, He will rejoice over the Church with singing and present it faultless in the Father's house. -If we enter into what the Church is to Christ who thus serves it, will not we catch tip His mind and spirit, and devote ourselves also to service to the Church, His Body? To serve thus means to serve in love, in lowliness, in meekness, and it may be in suffering, for the sake of the truth of the Church which must often lead away from what is highly esteemed among men, and so into the bearing of reproach -"His reproach."

Under the figure of the marriage relationship the Spirit speaks of Christ and the Church. The Church is His Bride-the Eve of the Second Man, the Last Adam. "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh." We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones." To injure the Church is to injure Christ-"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me"? A man and his wife "shall be one flesh," and "no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church." Well then, we are members one of another, members of Christ, we are of the same "flesh" as in the Church, His Body. How then do we treat our own "flesh"? Does it seem; sometimes as though we "hated" instead of loved? – as though there were no nourishing and cherishing of our own "flesh" in this divinely formed relationship? If so, how different we are from the. Lord! How needful to be in His mind and spirit to thus treat one another as He treats us. Do bur words and ways and acts breathe His spirit to one another? We are to hold the truth in love, "grow up to Him in all things, who is the Head, the Christ:from whom the whole Body, fitted together, and connected by every joint of supply, Recording to the measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the Body to its self-building up in love" (Eph. 4:15, 16, New Trans.). "Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us." "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

"But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." Ah, that is not the way with His own flesh, and it must not be ours with those who are His flesh, and indeed ours also, as in that one Body of which He is Head.

Oh, to enter into the heart of Christ for His own, and then live for them in love's service even as He loveth. By this shall we be known as His disciples. What matters but this, when, not the world, not man in his flesh, but eternity is before the soul.

Let us hear Him say afresh to us:"My Church," "My sheep," "My brethren," and let our hearts linger over the "My," remembering that "He laid down His life for us:and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

But it may be said:Look at the state of things among the Lord's people, look at the confusion, the departure from the truth, the worldliness, the multiplied divisions! Yes, look! But does the shame and the pain and the loss of it all burn into your soul like a hot iron? Does it bring you to your knees in confession and weeping? Think, oh think, how He must feel as He looks upon it all, and look, I pray you, with Him. Have you tasted even a little of suffering with Him because of it? Have we not rather let it chill our hearts, harden our feelings, stifle our love, instead o| it causing us to flee into His arms to learn His way for us amid it all? Only in such a refuge can we learn how to tread this thorny way, showing forth His graces of meekness, lowliness and compassion without sacrificing holiness and truth. How we need to grow in His grace and knowledge! The more difficult the path, the greater the need.

But consider now that the blessed Head in glory had a very definite yet simple order of things for the fellowship of His own on the earth, And this was for the purpose that in such a fellowship of saints the truth might be set forth before the world. In those companies called "the assemblies of Christ," "of God," "of the saints," it was purposed there should be the. manifestation of the spiritual nature of the Body of Christ to which every believer in such companies belonged. And though there has been the greatest possible departure from that simplicity in Christ which was formed at the beginning, there are even in our day many hundreds of companies of believers who have come out from the Babel of Christendom to practice the simple scriptural order of fellowship for the members of Christ's Body, and though there be weakness and failure to mark and mourn, yet where but among such can our path be found in the light of the truth of the Church and its blessed Head? Then let us apply what we have been considering as to the Church to our fellowship together in and with such companies, and seek that there at least we may be showing forth the mind and spirit of Christ toward one another. Does not the place we have taken lay this upon us as both our privilege and responsibility? Eschewing the way of the flesh, and of a worldly religiousness which pleases the natural man, and with some realization of the greatness of the Church in the purpose of God, and its nearness to the heart of Christ, let us seek at all personal cost to walk in the light of its truth and in the fellowship of those who own it and seek to practice according to it. This surely means that petty strife, self-seeking, and mere personal preferences will drop off from us, and our hearts will become enlarged so that in a worthy manner we shall show lowliness and meekness with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. John Bloore