experiences, its spiritual life, its holiness, its power, its purity,
its gifts of the Spirit, its unity of believers, and its fruits.
This assumes, of course, that during the centuries there has been a
departure from this standard.

[Sidenote: The church itself the real object of reformation]

No reformation since apostolic times has covered all this ground. All
the reformations taken together fall far short of this standard. They
have been reformations only in part, each movement simply placing
special emphasis on particular doctrines, or ordinances, or personal
experiences. Hence the need of further reformation. The present
movement embraces all the truth contained in all the previous
reformations of Protestantism. But it does not stop there. It stands
committed to all the truth of the Word of God. It goes straight to
the heart of the reformation subject and reveals the pure, holy,
_universal_ church of the apostolic times as made up of all those who
were regenerated, uniting them all IN CHRIST; in the "church of the
living God," which church was "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1
Tim. 3:15); the church that was graced with the gifts of the Spirit
and filled with holy power.

The true apostolic church has been largely lost to view since the
early Christian centuries, when a general apostasy dimmed the light
of truth and plunged the world into the darkness of papal night.
In modern times the term "church" as applied to a general body of
religious worshipers is usually employed in a restricted sense,
specifying some particular organization, as the hierarchy of Rome or
the aggregation of local congregations constituting a Protestant sect.
By a natural reaction from the Romish extreme, wherein the church and