involved in exceeding great and precious promises, which are still moving on to their fulfilment; it is circumstantial to doctrines which are fundamental to the whole system of revealed truth; it is rooted in the Gospel which was "preached aforetime to Abraham," and in the whole structure and design of Apostolic Christianity, by which "the blessing of Abraham has come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ" (Gal. iii. 8, 14); it rests not upon any one part of the Bible, but upon the Bible taken as a whole; it is in the very warp of the Scriptures.

III. The whole controversy concerning the church membership and baptism of infants hinges upon the more profound question of the perpetuity and identity of the Church as a Divine institution in the world. We hold that the Church of God is one and the same in all ages, being built upon the foundation of the Prophets as well as of the Apostles. God did not begin to build under the Old Testament, and then throw the work away and begin over again under the New. Judaism and Christianity are not different, much less hostile, religions. There is an organic and vital connection between the Old and the New Testament Scriptures; and as they constitute in their oneness the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, so the people of God under both dispensations constitute one and the same Church. The proof of this lies on the very surface of the Scriptures. The titles of the Church run through the whole sacred history, and are used in the same sense by Prophets and Apostles. The Kahal of the Old Testament is synonymous with the Ecclesia of the New. The Church of God is the kingdom of God. In His parables, the Saviour constantly speaks of the kingdom of God in such connections and under such imagery as to show

that He is describing an external and visible organization, the very same kingdom which is described in such glowing terms by Isaiah, and to which such precious promises of perpetuity and glory are made by all the Prophets. This Church or kingdom is not a series of scattered and isolated democracies, but one visible organization under a royal and Divine dominion. Its membership, even under the Old Testament dispensation, was not confined to the natural descendants of Abraham. Any Gentile might join it by complying with certain prescribed conditions. Hence at the day of Pentecost "there were dwelling at Jerusalem devout men out of every nation under heaven, both Jews and proselytes" (Acts ii. 5, 10). And while the converts to Christianity continued with one accord in the temple, claiming their privileges and performing their duties as defined under the old dispensation, and without any consciousness of being separated from the Church of their fathers, "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved." 1

Not only the titles but the mission and functions of the Church are the same under both dispensations, and could be fulfilled only by her perpetuity. "She is the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii. 15). To her are "committed the oracles of God" (Rom. iii. 2). If the New Testament Church is not the development and perpetuation of the Old Testament

1 The abolition of those restrictions which were suited to a preparatory state fitted her for universality; but that which fitted her for universality could in no sense whatever be her annihilation. The Jews were not cut off till after the Gentiles were taken in; and the excision of the Jews was no more the extermination of the visible Church than the lopping off of the diseased branches is the felling of the tree. MASON: Essays on the Church of God (Works, ii. 276).

Church, then the Old Testament Scriptures are not committed to her, and are no part of her rule of faith and practice, and the whole Scriptures have never been committed to any church for their preservation and exposition.

Moreover, the promises made to the visible Church and kingdom of God, many of which are yet unfulfilled, necessarily involve her perpetuity and identity. Take, for example, the words of Isaiah (lx. 3-5): “The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.... The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall be converted unto thee." These and similar promises were made, not to the Jews as a nation, not to the Jewish commonwealth, but they were made to the Church of God, embodied and covered under these temporal conditions. Christ gives us the summary of all these Old Testament promises to the Church when He tells us "they shall come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.”

The whole history of the new dispensation shows that the Church is one and the same. Christ Himself was circumcised, and received the baptism of John, and "fulfilled all righteousness" as a birthright member of the kingdom of God under the old economy. And while He was still a regular attendant upon the temple and an observer of the Feasts, He said, "tell it to the Church," as a rule of discipline for all time. He ate the passover the same night in which He instituted the Lord's Supper, thus showing the identity of the two sacraments, which Paul recognizes when he says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1

Cor. v. 7). Christianity appeared to both Jew and Gentile, and achieved its earliest and most signal triumph under the aspect of a new development of the same old religion. The Gospel was first proclaimed in the synagogues, and appealed for its vindication to the Old Testament Scriptures. The great Apostle of the Gentiles constantly insisted upon this vital connection. between the Old and the New. Before Agrippa and the assembled Romans he declared, "I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers" (Acts xxvi. 6). Appealing to the Jews, who rejected the Gospel and prided themselves on adhering to the law, he says, "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus" (Phil. iii. 3). In the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle compares the Church of God to the olive-tree, from which some of the natural branches (the Jews) were broken off, and into which the wild olive-tree (the Gentiles) were grafted. But he cautions the Gentile Christians against being puffed up by the mercy which had been shown to them. "And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive-tree, boast not against the branches; thou bearest not the root, but the root thee." The tree remains the same, though the branches are changed, and the root and fatness of it support and nourish those who are grafted into it. "The ancient theocracy is merged in the kingdom of Christ. The latter is but an enlargement and elevation of the former. The Church of God is the same in all ages and under all dispensations. It is the society of the true people of God, together with their children. The olive-tree is one,

though the branches are numerous, and sometimes changed." 1

It follows from the perpetuity and identity of the Church that whatever privileges were granted and whatever promises were made to her under the old dispensation, remain in full force until they are either explicitly repealed or exhaustively fulfilled.

IV. The promises and privileges given to her and constituting her endowment and inheritance in all ages are summed up in the covenant with Abraham, which is the perpetual charter of the Church.

The idea of a covenant between God and men, whether in the broad sense of a Divine arrangement or in the more specific sense of a promise suspended upon a condition, is one of the seed-thoughts of the Bible. Abraham stands in the same relation to the redeemed that Noah sustains to the whole human race; and the covenant with Abraham is the revelation and the promise of redemption, just as the covenant with Noah was the revelation of the Divine purpose and plan of Providence over the world. To regard Abraham as a Jew or as one of the children of Israel is to misapprehend his relation to the people of God in all ages, and to miss the true scope and meaning of the promises which were made to him as the father of all the faithful. He was a Gentile, called out from the world and made the covenant head of the Holy Catholic Church. The original promise concerning the seed of the woman was localized in his family, and afterwards in the family of Jacob in preference to that of Esau, and still further restricted to the tribe of Judah, the father of the Jews, and still further to the house and lineage of David, the theocratic representative of the Messiah; but all these re1 Dr. Hodge, Commentary on Romans, xi. 17-24.