by T. Austin-Sparks
First published in the "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1926-27. Some of this material was subsequently republished in a book by Witness & Testimony Publishers in 1931 under the title "In Christ".
The Church is a heavenly body not an earthly society, institution, organisation. The ecclesiastical systems of this world which call themselves "the Church" and "the Churches," are too often a grotesque caricature. There are no sects, denominations, "branches of the church," with God. Only one Church exists in the mind and interest of God, and that "the Church of the Firstborn," and all this other mess is because there has been an attempt made again and again to set up something for God on this earth as of the earth. God is not in this, but leaving it to compass its own end in confusion, or proceed apace in its delusion, He is quietly, without sound of axe or hammer putting His elect stones into a spiritual temple, a heavenly house. Only such as have the vantage ground of the heavenly places will see this, discountenance the false, and find full blessedness in doing what the Father is doing.
