that put their trust in Him. So here it is He that 'adds to the
Church daily them that were being saved.'

I believe, dear brethren, that modern Christianity has far too much
lost the vivid impression of this present Christ as actually dwelling
and working among us. What is good in us and what is bad in us
conspire to make us think more of the past work of an ascended Christ
than of the present work of an indwelling Christ. We cannot think too
much of that Cross by which He has laid the foundation for the
salvation and reconciliation of all the world; but we may easily
think too exclusively of it, and so fix our thoughts upon that work
which He completed when on Calvary He said, 'It is finished!' as to
forget the continual work which will never be finished until His
Church is perfected, and the world is redeemed. If we are a Church of
Christ at all, we have Christ in very deed among us, and working
through us and on us. And unless we have, in no mystical and unreal
and metaphorical sense, but in the simplest and yet grandest prose
reality, that living Saviour here in our hearts and in our
fellowship, better that these walls were levelled with the ground,
and this congregation scattered to the four winds of heaven. The
present Christ is the life of His Church.

Notice, and that but for a moment, for I shall have to deal with it
more especially at another part of this discourse,--the specific
action which is here ascribed to Him. _He_ adds to the Church, not
_we_, not our preaching, not our eloquence, our fervour, our efforts.
These may be the weapons in His hands, but the hand that wields the
weapon gives it all its power to wound and to heal, and it is Christ
Himself who, by His present energy, is here represented as being the
Agent of all the good that is done by any Christian community, and