All the fish, within those fifteen miles of salt water, might be said to _belong_ to the market; yet every one of them must be taken by hook and line ere his belonging to the market is of any practicable value.

So the children of the church may be said to belong to the church, and are to constitute her chief resource.

Rivers, and other distant or neighboring waters, would also send fish to that market, even if they were "far off;" but it is from the bay at her doors that the market would derive her principal supplies.

I do not see that children are members of the church, any further than those fishes belong to that market.

Go there when you will, you see the stalls filled from those adjacent waters; supplies are continually coming in; they are, in a sense, secured to the market by a covenant; yet every fish is caught and handled, before he has anything like membership in that market, as really as though he swam and were caught in Baffin's Bay;--only he is now far more likely to be caught, and, in a sense, he already belongs to the market by the seal of the state.
Mr.A., the reader of the sermon, not having much ideality, but much plain good sense, yet taking everything literally at first, and from his own honesty supposing that all figures of speech are to be cashed, as it were, for what they purport on their face, immediately challenged his brother to carry out the illustration.