from its difficulties, but to mix ourselves with its infinite opportunities.  So that if time be short, so far from that fact lessening their dignity or importance, it infinitely increases them; since upon these depend the destinies of our eternal being.  Unworldliness is this—­to hold things from God in the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world, and not to let the world have us; to be the world’s masters, and not the world’s slaves.

 XV.

 Preached January 11, 1852.

 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.

   “Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and
    earth is named.”—­Ephesians iii. 14, 15.

In the verses immediately before the text the Apostle Paul has been speaking of what he calls a mystery—­that is, a revealed secret.  And the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be “fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel.”  It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; it was a secret which the Jew had not suspected, had not even dreamt of.  It appeared to him to be his duty to keep as far as possible from the Gentile.  Circumcision, which taught him the duty of separation from the Gentile spirit, and Gentile practices, seemed to him to teach hatred towards Gentile persons, until at length, in the good pleasure and providence of God, in the fulness of time, through the instrumentality of men whose hearts rather than whose intellects were inspired by God, the truth came out distinct and clear, that God was the Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, “for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.”

In the progress of the months, my Christian brethren, we have arrived again at that period of the year in which our Church calls upon us to commemorate the Epiphany, or manifestation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, and we know not that in the whole range of Scripture we could find a passage which more distinctly and definitely than this, brings before us the spirit in which it is incumbent upon us to enter upon this duty.  In considering this passage we shall divide it into these two branches:—­1st, the definition which the Apostle Paul here gives of the Church of Christ; and, 2ndly, the Name by which this Church is named.

I. In the first place, let us consider the definition given by the Apostle Paul of the Christian Church, taken in its entirety.  It is this, “the whole family in heaven and earth.”  But in order to understand this fully, it will be necessary for us to break it up into its different terms.

1.  First of all it is taught by this definition that the Church of Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities—­a “family.”  A family is built on affinities which are natural, not artificial; it is not a combination, but a society.  In ancient times an association of interest combined