schools and teachers ever have been and ever shall be "by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive:" and lastly, in the same steadfast succession of the Church, both Pastors and Flock, is the virtual perfection of the whole mystical body of Christ :-" but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things. which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."1

How thankless and disloyal are we, then, to the Good Shepherd, if we use the great and blessed truths of the Unity of His Fold, and the succession of His pastors, as antagonistic and controversial dogmas. What can be more meagre and melancholy than to contend for them as externals and forms, and theories of Church-government? Surely, there are no truths more strictly and simply practical than these—none more full of direct benedictions to the faithful-more vivid, real, and sustaining. For what is the unity of His fold, but the everliving token of the presence and love of the heavenly Shepherd, gathering in one the world-wide flock under His own pastoral staff? Is it not a living and life-giving sign of His perpetual indwelling? Is it a mere pale which encompasses His true fold? a hollow external form, remote from the life of the Church? Is it not the one Body of the one Spiritthe living organization of the life-giving unity of Christ? What then do controversies and bickerings about the nature of His Church, and divisions for the sake of its unity, prove, but that we have not attained to so much as a perception of the spiritual reality that quickens the one Fold under one Shepherd? It may seem to be empty and lifeless to the wise of 1 Ephes. iv. 11-16.

this world; but it is full of tenderness for the poor and lost It is specially for them, that He has called His servants to a fellowship in His pastoral care. "Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter"—that is, the elect, despised, neglected, slain-" whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord; for I am rich and their own shepherds pity them not." "I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock;" that is, I will send and seek you; I will find you, O wandering sheep-the young, the ignorant, the helpless; "the poor "shall "have the Gospel preached to them."

:

If there be one institution of Jesus Christ, in which the love, tenderness, care, and providence of the Good Shepherd be revealed, it is in the commission and perpetual succession of His pastors: for, in one word, it is this,-that from the time of His going away to the time of his coming again, there shall never be wanting, in the darkest day, a chosen brotherhood, bound by all the vows which constrain the hearts of men to live a life of pity and compassion, humility and gentleness, toil and love; and that not for themselves, nor for their own kindred, nor for their own blood; but for "the poor of the flock"-for the ignorant, wandering, weary, soiled, outcast, perishing sheep of Christ. If the goodness of the heavenly Pastor be not here, let any one show where it may be found. If there be any persuasion, any faith, which is full of warmth, life, energy, consolation, love, to all the faithful, but above all to the ignorant, helpless, afflicted, and poor, it is that of the One Holy Catholic Church, as we confess it in our Baptismal creed, the one true Fold of the one Good Shepherd. It is He that still visibly discharges upon earth the manifold functions of His pastoral office, signing his sheep in holy Baptism, guiding them into the knowledge of the truth, carrying the weak in

1 Zech. xi. 4, 5, 7.

his bosom, bringing back again the lost by repentance, binding up the wounded with His words of consolation, feeding all souls that follow Him with the food of eternal life, folding them within the pale of salvation. What the Church does on earth, it does in His power, and name; and He, through it, fulfils His own shepherd care. This, then, is the external ministration of his goodness.

2. But once more. His love and care are shown not only in the external and visible provision which He thus made beforehand for the perpetual wants of his flock, but in the continual and internal providence wherewith He still watches over it. The whole history of His Church from the beginning -the ages of persecution, and "times of refreshing;" the great conflicts of faith with falsehood, and of the saints with the seed of the serpent; the whole career of His Church amid the kingdoms of the earth and changes of the world, are a perpetual revelation of His love and power. He has been gathering in His sheep one by one,-apostles, prophets, martyrs, saints, the pure and the penitent, the scattered and outcast, drawing them into His one visible fold, and gathering them still more closely and intimately to Himself, bringing them within the folds of His pavilion, and into the fellowship of His peculiar visitations. All that the Father hath given Him shall come to Him. "I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep." "I know them;" "and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand.”

The mystical number of His flock is written in the book of life; and he is ever fulfilling it; ever saying, through all the course of His Church, that which, while on earth, He

1 St. John x. 14, 27-29.

spake of His elect among the Gentiles; "Other sheep I have,

which are not of this fold; some not entered yet, some not born into the world; "them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd."

Is not this the way He has been dealing with each one of us from the time of our regeneration? Is not our whole life full of the tokens of His pastoral care? See how He has sought us out, and brought us to Himself. Although we were outwardly within His fold, yet for how

many years were

we in heart and in reality altogether lost, wandering in follies, plunged in deadly pitfalls. With what unwearied search did He follow us through all our blind and crooked paths. We met His eye at every turn, and beheld Him at every winding of our evil way. Perhaps there is hardly one of us who does not feel, on looking back, that he is not able to find the ultimate and true cause of his conversion to God in any of the apparent motives which turned him from the sin in which he was persisting. If we had been left to ourselves, why should we not have held on our original course without turning at all— nay, with confidence and settled obstinacy, with perpetual deterioration and darkening of soul? What was it that turned us at one time, when we would not be turned at another? Why then, and no sooner; and if not sooner, then why at all? Why, but that the Good Shepherd had found us at length; that having never left off to seek, He had overtaken us at last. He had been always seeking; but we refused to be found.

And, surely, the same is true even in those that live religiously. Even after we were found, and our hearts turned towards the true fold; who is there that knows the difficulty of repentance,-(that is, of returning from error, and from

St. John x. 16.

How

wandering without God in the world,)—and does not feel that, if he had been at any time left to himself, he would have sunk down by the way, or been beguiled aside, or even turned back again? What has forced us clean away from habits which, by their perilous allurement and subtil dominion, had a hold upon our very heart's will? What has borne us through the difficulties of humiliation, self-denial, chastisement of the flesh and spirit, through the difficulties and dangers of repentance, but that the Good Shepherd had laid us upon His shoulders, and bare us, all willing and yet unwilling, to our home and shelter? And so in like manner with all His servants. is it that they have not fainted in the way; nor fallen behind the onward march of the true flock that follows Him; nor lacked pasture, strength, light, refreshment, consolation? How is it that none have ever been "able to pluck them out of His hand?" All the schisms and heresies of proud and evil men; all the baits of the world; all the bribes of this corrupt life; all the seductions of earthly pleasure; all the attractions of ease and sloth; all the powers of darkness, have spent themselves in vain against the Hand that covers His elect. He has kept and folded us from ten thousand ills, when we did not know it in the midst of our security we should have perished every hour, but that he sheltered us, " from the terror by night and from the arrow that flieth by day"-from the powers of evil that walk in darkness, from snares of our own evil will. He has kept us even against ourselves, and saved us even from our own undoing. Surely, though He had not taken to Himself this loving and blessed Name, our own lives would have taught us to call Him the Good Shepherd.

Let us, then, meditate on this Name of love. Let us read the traces of His hand in all our ways, in all the events, the chances, the changes of this troubled state. It is He that dispenses all. It is He that folds and feeds us, that makes us