One says, "I am of the Catholic Church," another "I am of the Greek Church," another "I am of the Church of England," another "I am a Congregationalist," another "I am a Wesleyan," or a Baptist, and so on indefinitely.* Paul says to these Corinthians, "Who then, is Paul, and who is Apollos?" And I say, What, then, are those Churches? Are they the exponents of the "truth as it is in Jesus?" No. Are they the mirrors of His self-sacrificing, world-embracing love? No, they are only the shrines and the organs of human opinionsnothing more. If oracles, they are human, not divine. There is one true Church, and only one, and that Church is composed of those only who have a vital and a practical faith in Christ Himself as the living, loving Son of God, and the Redeemer of mankind, faith in Him, I say, and not mere belief in what men think or say about Him. The Christ of human creeds is not the Christ of the Gospel. The theological, the ethical, and the spiritual difference is overwhelmingly saddening. What is the theology of these Churches to Christ? What is the rose in the laboratory of the chemist to the rose in the garden, bathed in the dew of a summer's morning? What are those little muddy pools on the grassy marsh hard by the shore compared to the mighty ocean that rolls around them? What are astronomical tractates compared to the sidereal universe? Because human opinions at their best are so crude, so narrow, and so fallible, I would not have them stereotyped, still less would I have them organised for men to glory in. "I determined," says Paul, "to know nothing amongst men save Jesus Christ

* See "The Religions of the World." Published by Charles Griffin & Co.

and Him crucified." Away with Churchism, and let Christism take its place. "I left the Church," says Stopford Brooke, "not to be less, but more of a Christian." The text suggests:

II. The DEPRAVITY of Churchism. "Are ye not carnal?" The word carnal, σapkiкós, means "fleshly." Paul uses this word to express depravity; hence, elsewhere, he speaks of the mind of the flesh as contrary to the mind of the spirit, as at enmity against God, and as leading to spiritual death. If ye live after the flesh, ye must die." "Among the writers and philosophers of St. Paul's age, there was a well-known division of the whole nature of man into the flesh, the soul, and the spirit the flesh was the bodily nature, with all the desires and tendencies that rise out of it; the soul was the common understanding, the judgment, the aesthetical, and the logical faculties applied to the various subjects with which mere sense and intellect are conversant; the spirit was transcendental, that portion of man's nature properly divine, it had an inward intuition of God. The spirit was the voice and prompting of God within us. It could have no connection with evil, and nothing evil could proceed from it: but by the predominance of the senses and of the lower powers of the soul, its activity could be depressed, or altogether suspended." Now this flesh, this bodily part of man's being, possesses desires and tendencies, and appetites, which our corrupt imaginations nurture to inordinate power, and inspire with sinful propensities. Hence to this Paul seems to trace nearly all immoral conduct, for he says, “For whereas there is among you envyings, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" Hence he speaks, too, of being "vainly puffed up by his

fleshly mind." The apostle here implies that he who devotes himself to Churchism or to a religious party, walks as a "carnal man," that is, he is depraved.

First Is not the man "carnal" who allows his mind. to be engrossed in the human rather than in the divine? The walk of the spiritual man is a walk with God, he sees and walks with Him Who is invisible. God fills the horizon of his soul, not as a huge opaque rock, concealing all other objects, but rather as a crystal mountain, mirroring all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath. "God is in all his thoughts." On the other hand, the "carnal" man lives in the human, never rises above the cloudy and insalubrious atmosphere of human opinions. This is Churchism-souls living in human thoughts, and exulting in them. Ah me, how some men are chained to their little churches or sects! With them it is all "our Church,' "our body," "our principles." Instead of climbing up the breezy heights of divine ideas, they live down in sectarian glens, breathing the fog of human crotchets, aye, and sad to say, vaunting them, and with souls half suffocated sometimes exclaim, "I am a Churchman," "I am a Nonconformist," &c.

Secondly Is not the man "carnal" who allows his mind to be engrossed in the selfish rather than in the benevolent? It is a characteristic of the spiritual man that he lives not to himself or for himself, but to God and for others, self is a subordinate, not a supreme, object. On the contrary, the "carnal" man lives to himself, self is the object of his supreme interest and aim. His grand question is, "What shall I eat, what shall 1 drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed?" "What

shall I do to be saved"- and to be happy? Churchism

is intense selfishness, it cuts the soul away from all but the members of its own little community. How to escape the wrath of God-how to avoid the quenchless flames of hell, how to reach the transporting delights of Paradise-these are the absorbing questions in nearly all co-called Churches. Selfishness goes to the market in quest of the uncertain riches of earth, but goes to the Church with a far more ravenous and vicious craving, viz., to attain an "inheritance undefiled, incorruptible, and that fadeth not away." As a rule, what interest does a strict Churchite or sectary take in the welfare of any community but his own? On the contrary, there is often such a spirit of envy and jealousy exhibited as would rejoice in the extinction of all who differ in Church doctrine or policy. "If," says a modern writer, " among painters of the human face and form there should spring up a sect of the eyes, and another sect of the nose, a sect of the hand, and a sect of the foot, and all of them should agree, but in the one thing, of forgetting that there was a living spirit behind the features more important than them all, they would too much resemble the schools and cliques of Christians, for the spirit of Christ is the great essential truth, doctrines are but the features of the face, and ordinances but the hands and feet."

Thirdly Is not the man "carnal" who allows his mind to be engrossed in the transitory rather than the permanent? The spiritual man labours not supremely for the bread which perishes, nor seeks to "lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt," but is ever more in quest of eternal life or eternal goodness. His affections are set on the real, not the phenomenal, upon the changeless, not on the mutable. Not so the

"carnal" man, he is ever in pursuit of the temporary— temporary pleasures, temporary possessions, temporary honours. Now Churchism lives in the temporary. All human thoughts organised into churches are subject to constant change and decay. "Our little systems have their day, they have their day and pass away." In most churches you will find that many of the dogmas to which the founders attached importance, and once held with prominence, are long since extinct. In the credenda of churches there is a slow, silent, resistless revolution deleting dogmas engrossed in trust deeds, and printed in ecclesiastical formularies. Human thoughts, even the best of them, are only as the "grass that withereth," and the "flower that fadeth away.' God's thoughts alone endure, the "word of the Lord shall stand for ever."

CONCLUSION: In denouncing Churchism as an evil, I am far enough from implying that religious communions are in themselves wrong or pernicious. On the contrary, Ijudge otherwise. Union with those of kindred thoughts, sympathies, and aims, is natural and mayhap beneficent. Nor do I imply that the theologies and creeds on which Churches are organised, because they are human, are to be despised and neglected. The honest thoughts of enlightened, devout, and able men on spiritual realities, though untrue to eternal fact, demand and will repay respectful attention. The thoughts of other men awaken thoughts in us, and often the thoughts that are the most manifestly erroneous strike with the most suggestive force upon our own mind. Nor do I imply that it is in any way unbecoming in us to feel a greater interest in some types of religious thought, in some styles of religious ministry than in others. This, indeed, we could