How are we to receive this great and manifold ideal of what the Church means[[13]]? It is by meditating upon it till St. Paul's conceptions—and not any lower or narrower ones, Roman or Anglican or Nonconformist—become vivid to our minds. Then, knowing what we aim at restoring, we shall seek, in each parish and ecclesiastical centre, to concentrate almost more than to extend the Church, to give it spiritual, moral, and social reality, rather than to multiply a membership which means little. For if men can understand the meaning of the Church, as the city of God, the family of God, the sanctuary of God, in the world, there is little fear that whatever is good in humanity will fail of allegiance to her. The kings of the earth will bring their glory and honour into her, and the nations of the earth shall walk in her light.
[[1]] Sanday and Headlam's Romans, pp. 122-124.
[[2]] Hebr. ix. 8.
[[3]] 1 Peter ii. 4.
[[4]] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v.-vi. 11.
[[5]] Col. i. 28.
[[6]] Luke xii. 42.
[[7]] Gal. iv. 11; v. 1.
[[8]] Col. ii. 20-22.
[[9]] Cor. xi. 2, 16.