TO JOHN BIRD

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

This Sermon is Dedicated,

BY HIS GRACE'S PERMISSION,

AS A RESPECTFUL TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM.

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THE BODY AND THE MEMBERS.

1 COR. XII. 14. 17. 21. 26.

The body is not one member, but many. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? . . . The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

In the Lessons for the Sunday of this week, and in the Epistle for the Sunday of next week', the Apostle calls to our remembrance

1 1 Cor. xii. 3—31; Eph. iv. 1—6.

two relations under which all human society, and especially all Christian society, is to be regarded, a living family, and a living body. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family, of whom every family in heaven and earth is named." "One body and one spirit." The words of the text unfold the principle on which such a family, such a body, with the manifold diversities of necessity involved in their constitution, is to be held together, strengthened, edified.

The doctrine thus put forth is not one which commends itself immediately to our uninformed or unenlightened reason. Our natural childish thought is that all good must be of the same kind; that every good object must be accomplished by the same means; that every deviation from that which we ourselves acknowledge to be good and useful must be evil or useless. The doctrine announced by the Apostle is exactly the opposite. By various arguments and analogies, human and divine, he urges upon us that God's gifts are characterised, not by their likeness, but by their diversity; that God's purposes are accomplished, not in one way only, but in many; that if all

attempts at usefulness were cast in the same mould, the result would be, if not positively evil, at least very far below the highest good. It is a principle which, as I have said, is, like most other high Evangelical truths, distasteful to the foolishness of the natural man. The pride of our carnal hearts struggles against its reception. It requires all the light which revelation and experience can give, to secure our acknowledgement of its truth.

But,

though not agreeable to our selfish narrow conceptions, it is nevertheless not only true, but is a maxim of which the truth is more and more applicable in proportion to the fuller development and growth of men, of nations, and of churches. To the child, to the barbarian, sameness of design may be identified with excellence; the strong hand and fleet foot may supersede all other distinctions to them; all characters, institutions, even all outward forms and features, are alike unvarying, simple, and monotonous. But it is far otherwise to the civilised Christian man; it is far otherwise with churches and societies, such as those with whom in our stage of the world's existence we have to deal; it is far