A TUFT OF MOSS. 97 



single individual. " It is not good for man to be 

 alone ; " and this law of God is expressed in the origi- 

 nal plan of his constitution. The social state is not a 

 discovery of his own, or an accident of his circum- 

 stances; it is an essential element in his complex 

 organization, existing from the very beginning. It 

 was not a number of isolated units, but a social body 

 which God contemplated when He said, " Let us 

 make man in our own image ; " and prefigurations 

 of that design and preparations for carrying out that 

 appointment were made from the foundation of the 

 world. 



We have thus found the key to the social habit of 

 the moss to be man ; and as man is the key that ex- 

 plains the meaning and use of the social condition of all 

 the lower organisms, so the Church of the living God is 

 the key that explains the social condition of man. It is 

 for the purpose of bringing out and educating to the 

 utmost the nature of man that the social life and social 

 worship of the Church are designed. As members of 

 the Church we find ourselves partakers of a corporate 

 life and a history larger than our own. By association 

 with our fellow-members our view-point is elevated and 

 our horizon widened. Our own experience is individual 

 and special ; our own capacities are narrow and limited, 

 and therefore it is but a small part of the love that 

 passeth knowledge that we know, and of the fulness 

 of God that we are filled with. Others possess qualities 

 in which we are deficient, and are led in ways that we 

 know not ; others bring out new relations of God that 



