Church, and so the visible or seeming church is of larger extent than the real.” 1 There are not few that be saved. Only the mind of a Pharisee could ask the question or give it an affirmative answer.

The assembly of the redeemed, as seen by John in the Apocalypse, is "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues" (Rev. vii. 9). It is no new discovery of modern thought, but the legitimate outgrowth of the theology of the Reformation, as opposed to the narrow dogmatism of the Church of Rome, that the great majority of the human race will be saved through Christ. It was no advocate of a new theology, but Dr. Charles Hodge, who said: "We know from the Bible itself that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth God is accepted of Him. No one doubts that it is in the power of God to call whom He pleases from among the heathen, and to reveal to them enough truth to secure their salvation."2 It is in the works of the same eminent expounder of the Reformed theology that we find the clearest and most Scriptural defence of the doctrine that all who die in infancy, baptized or un-baptized, are redeemed and saved through Christ. This doctrine is intimately connected with our subject; for if all who die in infancy are saved, they belong to the body of God's elect and to the Church of the First-born, which are written in heaven. "I tell you," says Dr. Alexander Hodge, "that the infinite majority of the Spiritual Church of Jesus Christ came into existence outside of all organization. [He means, of course, all visible and earthly organization.] Through

1 Qualifications for Full Communion Work, i. 96.

2 Theology, iii. 476.

Hodge's Theology, i. 27.

all the ages, from Japan, from China, from India, from Africa, from the isles of the sea, - multitudes, flocking like birds, have gone to heaven of this great company of redeemed infants of the Church of God."1

The doctrine of the salvation of all dying infants is not a mere abstract theory, invading the secret things which belong to God. It is necessary to the consistent interpretation of Scripture and to the vindication of God's character as a righteous Judge and a loving Father. While it comes home to our dearest affections and hopes, and touches our tenderest sorrows with the finger of Christ, it magnifies the grace of God and sets the high mystery of Divine fore-ordination in its true light as a help and not a hindrance to the salvation of men. It throws a gleam of hope over all our efforts to extend the triumphs of the visible Church on earth. The visible is pervaded and enveloped by the invisible. Around and above the valley of conflict and the sacramental host, the mountains are full of horsemen and chariots of fire. The fruit of the travail of Christ's soul satisfies His infinite love.

It is not our business either to define or to depend upon the extraordinary possibilities of salvation. Our business is to preach the Gospel to every creature. We may not hold out any hope which that Gospel does not clearly set before us. But at the same time it is not our prerogative, and it does not belong to the commission of the visible Church, to shut the gates of mercy on mankind by excluding any from salvation which the Gospel does not expressly exclude. Christ has cosmic relations which, because they do not come within the

1 A. A. Hodge's Popular Lectures.

For a fuller discussion of the salvation of infants, see Appendix, Lect. I. (A).

sphere of our agency and responsibility, are but occasionally hinted at in Scripture. But these hints are very precious. They are gleams of light from a glory that is now inaccessible and beyond our comprehension, but which we shall one day behold and inherit. Such passages as the following are rainbows on all the dark clouds of the future: "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me" (John xii. 32); "God is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe" (1 Tim. iv. 10); He "is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet. iii. 9); “All things were created by Jesus Christ, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist; and He is the head of the body, the Church; for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and having made peace through the blood of the cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself" (Col. i. 16–20); “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him" (Eph. i. 10). Such passages are not to be flung aside as though they had no meaning; and while their dim transparency is not to be so interpreted as to contradict plainer declarations of Scripture, nor to include any whom the Gospel excludes from its benefits, nor to deny the definite purpose of God in regard to those whom He has chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. i. 4), they may and ought to be used to enlarge our conception of the Divine purpose of redemption and of the Church, which is "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all."

II. One extreme begets another. On both sides of

every controversy men are apt to lean backwards. To the assertion that the Church spoken of in the Old and New Testament is "always a visible society," the extreme controversial response is that the Church, as such, is not a visible society at all. The argument by which this extreme position is defended may be summed up in the following propositions: (1) None but those who truly repent and believe are ever denominated KλŋToi (the called); and as the ἐκκλησία consists of the κλητοί, the Church must consist of true believers. (2) No external visible society, as such, is holy; and therefore the Church of which the Scriptures speak is not a visible society, but the communion of saints. (3) The Church as the communion of saints is one; as an external society it is not one; therefore the Church is a company of believers, and not an external society. (4) Unity of faith is one of the attributes of the true Church, which cannot be predicated of any external society calling itself the Church of God.

To the first of these propositions, — that “the Church must consist of true believers," — it will be sufficient to answer that it begs the question under discussion, and contradicts a multitude of Scriptures, in which the Church is described as including both true and nominal believers.

The assumption which underlies all the other statements is, that the attributes given in Scripture to the Church, regarded as the whole body of true believers, do not apply in any sense to the whole body of professed believers. This assumption is contrary to the received maxim, that a mixed body may be designated by the attributes of one of its elements; as in the case of the human and Divine person of Christ, and the person of man, consisting of both soul and body.

Holiness is an attribute of all true believers; but every believer is also a sinner, no believer on earth is perfectly holy. Does it follow, therefore, that there are no true believers in the world? The same logic which proves that the Church, as such, is not a visible society, because the Church is holy, whereas no visible society is perfectly holy, is of equal force to prove that the Church is not "the communion of saints," because no saint on earth is perfectly holy. If the continuance of sin in believers individually, and consequently in the whole body of believers, does not preclude that body from being called "the holy Catholic Church," neither does the continuance of sinners among professed believers preclude the whole body of professed believers from being called the holy Catholic Church, nor from inheriting the promise of final and complete sanctification.

When Paul wrote his epistles "to the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours" (1 Cor. i. 2), he certainly addressed a visible society, to whom his letters could be read, and he certainly did not intend to preclude from his appellation of the whole body the sinners whose unholiness he rebuked, and whom he hoped to reclaim from their backsliding. The whole nominally Christian communion is addressed as "the church of God which is at Corinth," and this is broadened in its application so as to include professing Christians, in all ages and lands, by the comprehensive clause, " with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." If Paul had meant to discriminate, in the use of the word "church," between