bud nor natural branches, stock nor roots

a mere congregation of scions. It admits of branches being taken from it, which never belonged to it, and of exotic branches being grafted upon it; but to what these branches are attached, the learned Commentator, with all the Rabbinical doctors of Jerusalem and Babylon to help him, has not been able to tell us.

Some of our Pedo-Baptist brethren, although they do not make quite such work as this with the planting of the Lord, yet they go very far, in the process to which they would subject the church, to mar it in those respects, in which a fruit-bearing tree is emblematic of its nature. As soon as a branch has grown to a size to bear fruit, if it yield none, it must either be cut off entirely, or so far dismembered as to lose all share "of the root and fatness of the olive." At all events, the buds are all to be torn off, and there is death to the whole branch. They would have none but fruit-bearing branches, with very little buds on them; and these are to be watched very closely. If they

give indications of producing nothing but leaves, they are at once to be broken off. A natural tree dealt with after this manner, would be likely to resemble one that had been standing in the neighbourhood of the house. of Job's eldest son, in the day when it was smitten on the four corners thereof, "by a great wind from the wilderness."

A fruit tree is not a mass of fruit, but an apparatus for the production of fruit. All its branches are not productive; some not at first, some never. But they belong to the tree, and have their place in the general economy. Each branch, each leaf, while it is sustained by the tree, contributes to its health, and vigour, and fruitfulness. The processes of nature in the case, are too well understood to need proof or explanation. From year to year, fruit is produced and gathered. The leaves having performed the part assigned to them in the general economy, are first nipped by the frost, and then driven away by the blasts of autumn, to be seen no more.

I am aware that by the help of a little imagination, resemblances may be carried to an

extreme, that detracts from the beauty of similitude, and from the dignity of language. But we are in little danger here; for the things themselves in the church, of which the properties of the tree just spoken of are emblematic, are so obvious that, without the help of the emblem, they could not fail to attract our attention. Not only is the visible church perpetuated and extended by a succession of individuals, proceeding one from another, after the manner of the successive branches of a tree, but it is an apparatus for the production of piety, as the other is for the production of fruit. The maintainance of the public ordinances of religion will hardly be denied to be essential to the interests of personal piety. Without such ordinances believers themselves lose their vigour, and become unfruitful. Accommodations for worshipping assemblies, and for the support of the ministry, are not to be dispensed with, if religion is to prosper

in the world.

From the nature of the case, as well as from the fact, that infants are received into the church, in a way to ensure her perpetuity,

and to promote her enlargement, in a degree commensurate with the increased demand for the public offices of religion, it is perfectly natural to infer, that such an organization was originally designed, as would secure the provision necessary for their maintainance. The fact is certain, that the pious alone have seldom been able to sustain those means, which are essential to their own spiritual welfare. They have ever been more or less dependent for them upon others, less favoured by the grace of God than themselves. Let those who will subject them, by their idea of the church, to the taunt of "Corban," from those who build their churches, and support their ministers; for one, I must believe, that so far as the circumcised or baptized have lent their aid to these objects, they have only contributed towards carrying out an important end contemplated in the organization of the visible church. The many ten thousands of Israel were necessary to support the institutions of Moses in safety and efficiency. The temple with its magnificence, the altar with its victims, and the priesthood with its dependen

cies, could not have been sustained (miracles apart) without the strength of the nation. And what would become of a vast majority of our churches now, if those who have only been baptized were to withhold from them their support? It would be like tearing from the fruit tree every limb that was not productive, and the effect would be the same in the sadness of its character. The tree would lose large supplies of nourishment from the surrounding atmosphere, by which its vigour and fruitfulness had been promoted, and the means of grace would cease to be maintained in the churches the organizations themselves would pass out of existence.

If, instead of confounding the churches visible and invisible, a just regard were paid to the subserviency of the one to the other, we should be far from turning out men from the one because they did not belong to the other; or from saying to them, you have no business. here; when without their aid, we should have neither minister nor sanctuary. When God gave them privileges, he laid them under obligations-obligations for their own sake,tob e