TO BELONG to the church of God is a unique and soul-satisfying privilege.

It is the
divine purpose to gather out a people from the far corners of the earth to bind them
into one body, the body of Christ, the church, of which He is the living head. All who
are children of God in Christ Jesus are members of this body, and in this relationship
they may enjoy fellowship with each other, and fellowship also with their Lord and
Master."

These are the terms in which the Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual introduces

the subject of the church of God.   They come as close as one may wish to a definition
1

of the subject. There is, indeed, no formal Seventh-day Adventist definition of church
that may claim to be authoritative. The use of the word in the Church Manual is not
an attempt to provide us with an abstract explication. Rather we must go back to the
New Testament historical reality of the church as a religious community that, under
the power of the Holy Spirit, recognized the Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth.

THE CHURCH AS A COVENANTAL REALITY

The very use of the Greek word ekklesia to designate the glorious reality to which
early Christians belonged seems to suggest on their part a clear conception of what
the term meant. This was no new term, to be sure. Used for the popular assemblies in
the government of the Greek city-states, it had taken on a religious meaning in the
LXX as the "congregation" of Israel, the Jewish theocratic people. This seems to be
one of the dominant ideas of the primitive Christian church when it uses the
term ekklesia. It considered itself to be "the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16), the true
continuation of God's elect. Those who lived wholly by faith in God, although not
descending biologically from Abra ham as "children of the flesh," had become Abra
ham's spiritual descendants, "the children of the promise."  2

God's special work for the salvation of fallen humanity and the beginning of His
church are related in the story of the covenant He contracted with Abraham, His
servant (see Genesis 17). It was through this alliance with Abraham and his posterity
that Israel was brought into a particular relationship with Yahweh, different from the
relation existing between God and the heathen. God was still Lord of the
uncircumcised, but He was the God of Israel in a unique and special sense. The
Biblical religion is plainly a covenantal religion which, in the case of Israel, finds its
classical expression in Exodus 19:3-6:

Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus
you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You have seen what I
did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.
Now there fore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own
possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to
the children of Israel" (R.S.V.).

In this passage we are con fronted with the Biblical notion of the church, its mission
and its task. God has chosen Israel for salvation, not salvation for Abraham's
descendants alone, but salvation for the whole world. Israel is to be a kingdom of
priests whose task is to impart the knowledge of God to the whole of mankind. This
priestly nation, the church of the Exodus and of the Torah, is, in fact, the light
destined to illuminate all men (Isa. 43:10; Zech. 8:23). When he finished reading the
commandments of God and the people answered, "All that the Lord has spoken we
will do" (Ex. 24:7), Moses sealed the covenant by throwing the blood of the animal
offerings upon the people, declaring, " 'Behold the blood of the covenant which the
Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words' " (Ex. 24:8, R.S.V.).

A MATTER OF CONTINUITY
The early Christians claimed to be in continuity with Israel, the people whom God
had chosen before the time of Jesus. From the very beginning they understood their
Christian existence in the perspective of the Old Testament Messianic announcement
and fulfillment. This implied a very definite theology of history: "In many and
various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days
he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through
whom also he created the world" (Heb. 1:1,2, R.S.V.). The days of expectation were
over. The day of the Lord had come. For all that, however, the new covenant
inaugurated by the Lord Jesus and sealed by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was but the
covenant of old, re stored, fulfilled, resumed and renewed. The Christian church
identified itself clearly with God's true Israel of which it was the remnant.

This audacious reinterpretation of the plan of salvation revealed in the Old

Testament is obviously the result of Jesus' own statement that His life and death
were the fulfillment not only of the Old Testament prophecies but also of the whole
sacrificial system of Israel. "And he said to them," writes Mark, " 'this is my blood of
the covenant, which is poured out for many' " (Mark 14:24, R.S.V.). The expression
"blood of the covenant" seems taken directly from Exodus 24:8. According to the
Pauline ac count, Jesus declared: " 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood' " (1
Cor. 11:25, R.S.V.), thus explicitly referring to Jeremiah's prophecy regarding the day
when the Lord would make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of
Judah (see Jer. 31:31-33). Thus, in the New Testament the church of Jesus Christ is
described as the new Israel established by means of the covenant in the blood of
Messiah. The Christian church is the inheritor of the spiritual privileges and
responsibilities that once be longed to Israel of old. No doubt with Exodus 19 in
mind, Peter could write, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you
out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are
God's people" (1 Peter 2:9,10, R.S.V.).

AN ASSEMBLY CALLED TOGETHER BY GOD

There is no way, outside of faith, of affirming the reality of the church. Faith alone
can declare that certain facts proceed from a divine intervention in history and,
signifying the presence of God, are constitutive of a specific reality that is called
church. Outside of faith, the church is merely an association based on some social
instinct, some impulse of mutual affection or any other natural attraction assembling
people and binding them together.

The church is a sociological reality, a human society, temporal to be sure, visible, and
still "in this world," and in that sense comparable to other groupings of men. But it is
more than merely a human community, for it is first of all an assembly called
together by God. Those it groups together are believers, people answering God's call,
and with whom He re news the covenantal relationship, the original Father-son
fellowship. It is the Lord who draws and gathers, Christ indwelling the believer,
grafting. him upon Him to make him participant of all His riches. This unique
conjunction through which Christ unites Himself to the believer and the believer to
Him expresses the convictions of early Christians that the Christian church
transcends by far the dimensions of a strictly human society. There exist side by side,
we believe, the divine, objective element, and the subjective, human dimension,
which must both be recognized in their encounter to give us a correct understanding
of the New Testament view of the church.

IMAGES OF THE CHURCH

The inseparable connection between Christ and the church is ostensibly conveyed to
the Christian reader by the different images used in the Bible. Accordingly, the
church is variously described, among other things, as a flock, a building, and a bride,
as well as the body of Christ.

The first symbol, the pastoral image of the flock of which Christ is the "good
shepherd" (John 10:1-16; Luke 12:32), still has immediate relevance in an age of
3 

industrialization. It reminds us that Christ's disciples are distinct, living individuals,

each needing a shepherd's care and protection, which they can have only as they
unite and follow Christ.

When the New Testament depicts the church as the "household of God, built upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the
cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy
temple in the Lord" (Eph. 2:19-21, R.S.V.), there is little doubt about the in tended
4 

meaning of the metaphor. The church must be, uniquely, the sign of God's presence
in history. Ever being built for it is never complete on earth until God's final purpose
is consummated Christ holds it together and shapes it.

Few figures can surpass the bride-bridegroom metaphor that so adequately

illustrates the actual relationship between Christ and His ekklesia in Ephesians 5: 21-
33. The phrase spontaneously calls to mind the marriage intimacy so often used in
the Old Testament to represent the covenant relationship existing between God and
His people,5 and which Jesus adopted when He referred to Himself as the
bridegroom (Mark 2:20). It emphasizes the love of Christ for His church, the love of
Christ who sacrificed Himself for the sake of His people, so that they may become
"one flesh" with Him. Of at least equal importance, on the other hand, are the
implications of obedience, purity, and responding love that Christ's bride ought to
possess. Unconditionally subject to her Lord, the church draws her support from
Christ alone.

It remains, however, that the concept of the church as the body of Christ, prob ably
more than any other symbol, underscores the degree to which Christ fills
His ekklesia with the riches of His glory (Eph. 1:18-23). He continually distributes in
6 

His body gifts of ministries in order that its members might reflect His traits of
character in their own lives and work out His purposes of grace (Eph. 4:11-16). Christ
is the head of the church insofar as He is the source of its nourishment, growth,
direction, and unity. Because Christ is the animating spirit, the life of the church, all
members are to be modeled on Him until Christ is formed in them (see Gal. 4:19).
There is no room here for division or schism since it is "one body" (Col. 3:15) of
which all believers are members.

These diverse images meant for the instruction of the Christian community indicate
that for the New Testament writers the church is no more separable from Christ than
Christ is separable from God.

THE CHURCH AND THE SPIRIT

Apart from Christ the Christian ekklesia is no longer the church in any true sense.
Neither can it exist without the Holy Spirit. The effective presence of the Spirit is no
less essential to the life of the church than the continuing presence of Christ. The
very faith that characterizes the believer is, according to the New Testament, the
work or gift of the Spirit: "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord!' except under the influence
of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3, N.E.B.*). As the Lord promised, the Spirit would
"guide you into all truth" (John 16: 13). Without the presence and work of the Holy
Spirit the church is inconceivable.

This inseparability of the church and the Spirit is underlined with particular force in
the event of Pentecost. The day that marked the actual constitution of the church was
also the day when the disciples "were all filled with the Holy Spirit," when the Spirit
was poured out on them (Acts 2:4, N.E.B.). Not that there had been no witness to the
work of the Spirit in pre-Christian times, but both the testimony of Jesus and the
conviction of the apostles tell us in the New Testament that on that day began a new
kind of life, which is the Spirit's gift (John 14:16, 17; Acts, passim). This was an actual
encounter between man and the divine Spirit.

The Spirit's work, as effected in the Christian community, is of great significance for
the church. Being a person, He deals with us as persons. Since His ministry is the
continuing sequel to the Incarnation, He illumines man's mind and enables us to
recognize the presence of Jesus. Through Him Christ is no longer a figure of the past,
nor our knowledge of Him some mere biographical acquaintance, but a deep and
actual personal fellowship, a relationship between per son and persons. Christ comes
to us daily in the Holy Spirit who calls us not only to faith but to discipleship. "Led by
the Spirit of God" (Rom. 8:14) into a filial relationship with God, we are also "called
in one body" of Christ (Col. 3:15) where we participate in the koinonia of the Spirit
and of Christ. ' It is in this oneness of thought and mind that the life of the Spirit-
7

filled believer bears "the fruit of the Spirit" which, according to the apostle, is "love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal.
5:22, 23, R.S.V.).

Besides these attributes of the Christian life which are the "fruit" of the Spirit's work
for all who are led by Him, there are particular spiritual gifts, or charismata, which
are given to certain members of the church in varying degrees till the end of time.
These are special qualities and powers imparted to believers for the service of the
church (Rom. 12:6-8). They were provided for the church when Jesus ascended to
heaven (Eph. 4:8-14). Described as given by Christ (verse 11) they are also believed to
be distributed by the Spirit as the latter sees most needful (1 Cor. 12:11) for the
purpose of mending and uniting the saints as well as for preparing the church for the
coming of its Lord.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORD OF GOD

The church does not exist for its own sake. God acquired it as His own special
possession so that it may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called it out of
darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). It exists to accomplish the
commission that it was given by Jesus Christ. Just as Christ came to do the work that
the Father gave Him, so the church, being "the aroma of Christ to God among those
who are being saved and among those who are perishing" (2 Cor. 2:15, R.S.V.), bears
the responsibility of spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of God every where.

Constantly confronted by the problem of its authority in the course of carrying out
this commission, the Christian church turns and looks to Christ its head, for
guidance and direction. In Him, received as the Word of God incarnate and living
among men, it finds the only authoritative source of its decisions and choices. Being
a Christian means to say Yes to Him and to accept His authority unreservedly.

The Christian religion is not, in the first place, the acceptance of a creed nor the
following of a moral code. In its innermost essence it is, as in the case of the apostles,
a commitment to a person, to Jesus Christ. As it was with the apostles, it is the same
with us. It is Jesus Christ Himself, and not some teaching about Him, who is the
Word of God for the church. In order to help us, centuries later, to recognize the
Spirit of Christ and to establish with the Lord the kind of personal relationship the
apostles experienced, the Word of God comes to us in the form of written or spoken
language. The written word of the apostles is not, of course, identical with the divine
Word it self, since human language shares in our weakness. But it is the chosen
means by which God speaks to us. The only Christ we know is the Christ of the
apostles and of their testimony. This does explain, we believe, why the New
Testament writers expected those who received their message to recognize it as
authoritative, as "the word of God" (1 Thess. 2:13), "a command of the Lord" (1 Cor.
14:37, R.S.V.).

The sincere preaching of the word of God as found in the Scriptures, therefore, is
surely no secondary or accidental aspect of the church's life. Here lies its authority.
The church stands and falls with the written Word, for these writings are the legible
form of the apostolic witness to God's revelation in Jesus Christ, as John underlines
when he writes: "That which was from the be ginning, which we have heard, which
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands,
concerning the word of life . . . we pro claim also to you, so that you may have
fellowship with us" (1 John 1:1, 3, R.S.V.). By faith and on the testimony of Christ and
the apostles the Christian church accepts Old Testament and New Testament
Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God. Here is where it can and must, in each
generation, so learn to know Christ that it may know with what authority it faces a
world that increasingly questions its right to speak.

THE HOLINESS OF GOD'S CHURCH

In virtue of the mediatorial righteousness of its Lord, the church whose "fellow ship
is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3, R.S.V.) is ac counted
holy before God. It can truly be called a community of saints. Its members who by
faith have been under the benefaction of God's forgiveness have thus re-entered the
divine covenant, the divine communion.

This holiness is first of all a holiness of the inner man that finds its expression in
one's outer life. But it also carries the notion of separation, of setting apart. This
aspect is definitely under lined in Israel of old and retained by the New Testament.
God's people cannot be confused with others. Faith always singles out. The church is
holy because it is separated from the spirit of the world and is consecrated to God,
and it affirms the objective authority of Jesus Christ over all its members.

THE CHURCH IS APOSTOLIC

Called by God, nurtured by His Word, and accounted holy before Him, the church
would contradict itself, how ever, if it did seclude itself in contemplation, in thanks
giving, or even in intercession. The church is also apostolic. It remembers that Jesus,
its Lord, called, then sent on a mission, those who learned from Him the mes sage of
the gospel. They be came recipients and depositaries of His Word, and His
messengers as well. Every where they went they were Christ's envoys or apostles in
the basic sense of the New Testament word, His representatives and ambassadors
carrying His message of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17-21). "He who hears you hears
me," explained Jesus (Luke 10:16, R.S.V.). The church, therefore, is apostolic since it
is Christ's messenger to mankind.

It seems futile to labor the fact that truthfulness to the gospel of Christ implies,
concretely, fidelity to the apostolic writings. To be "apostolic" also signifies devoting
oneself "to the apostles' teaching and fellowship" (Acts 2:42, R.S.V.). The church will
be apostolic to the extent that it will be listening to the apostles' teaching as
committed to the Scriptures, which to begin with is the condition on which Christ's
authority will exercise itself upon it.

THE CHURCH, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

Membership in the church is always the response to a divine invitation. Men are
drawn to the church because they are haunted by the figure of Jesus Christ who
invites them to share the task of giving explicit witness to what has happened, what is
happening, and what will happen in history. Inasmuch as only God knows those who
have answered, He alone knows the limits of the church.

All is not Israel that is called Israel, testifies the apostle, neither is true circumcision a
mere mark in the flesh (see Rom. 2:25- 29). All men knew that Nathanael was an
Israelite; the Lord alone knew with certainty that he was one in whom there was no
guile. By speaking of a visible and an invisible church, Seventh-day Adventists do not
refer to two different churches, but to two aspects of the one church of Christ. As it
exists on earth the church is both visible and invisible. It is said to be invisible
because its spiritual nature is perceptible only by faith, also be cause it is impossible
to determine infallibly who does and who does not belong to it. The church invisible
on earth is that company of people who belong to the covenant of grace, have
received the Holy Spirit, and are members of the body of Christ.

The idea of invisibility, therefore, while expressing the transcendence and unity of
the church, is no attempt on our part to disparage the temporal reality and life of the
church. The invisible church assumes a visible form in an external organization
through which it expresses itself. The church becomes visible in Christian profession
and conduct, in the ministry of the Word and of the sacraments, as well as in external
organization and government.

Seventh-day Adventists sincerely acknowledge that Christ is working in and through

all Christian churches. They hold that God has earnest followers in all Christian
communions and even beyond the walls of Christianity. At the same time, however,
they continue to claim that among the Christian churches the Seventh-day Adventist
Church holds a unique position. They understand themselves as a people of
prophecy. They believe that God prophetically ordained—as expressed in Revelation
14: 6-12—that in the last days there would arise a religious movement that would
warn the world about the imminence of Christ's second coming and seek to prepare
men for the day of God by turning them to paths of full conformity to the teachings of
the Scriptures. As God's people in ancient times were called to flee from literal
Babylon (see Isa. 48:20; Jer. 50:8; 51:6, 45) in order that they might return to
Jerusalem, so His people today are called out of mystical Babylon in order that they
may not receive of her plagues (see Rev. 18:4) but may be accounted worthy to enter
the New Jerusalem. Pseud-epigraphic and early Christian writers identified mystical
Babylon as Rome of the Caesars. Two centuries be fore the Reformation some began
to apply the metaphor to papal Rome. The time is not yet, but Adventists understand
that immediately prior to the eschaton, this metaphor will include all nominal
Christians whose commitment to human traditions and to the world takes priority
over their commitment to Christ—as measured by their way of life. The proclamation
to leave Babylon will bring out a company of committed Christians— sometimes
referred to as the "remnant church"—of whom it is said, "Here are they that keep the
commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus" (Rev. 14:12). This claim does not
mean that Seventh-day Adventists consider themselves better Christians than others.
It has to do with the Adventist Church as a prophetic movement entrusted with a
prophetic message to the whole world.

THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS

From the foregoing exposition it should be rather clear that Seventh-day Adventists
consider the church as a fellowship of men who, called through the Holy Spirit, are
bound in living faith and obedience to the divine Word. This church is universal for it
is not the church of a particular country, generation, or culture. It transcends all its
local and temporal realizations, which are only provisional forms till the glorious day
of its Lord's return.

Baptism is the sign of entrance to the church, confirming one's spiritual birth into the
family of God. Christian baptism is not a baptism of water alone, but also a baptism
of the Spirit. There is an indissoluble link between Christian baptism and the gift of
the Spirit. It is a sign not only of repentance and forgiveness, of dying and rising with
Christ (Rom. 6:3-11) but also of receiving the Holy Spirit(1 Cor. 12:3). Whoever is
baptized belongs no longer to the world and is no longer subject to it. He wishes to be
acknowledged as under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He
belongs to Christ alone and relates himself to the world only through Christ.

If baptism is the visible sign of our entrance into God's family, the Lord's Supper,
preceded by the foot washing, represents all that God has done for us, is doing, and
will yet do at the end of the age. By partaking of the broken bread and the fruit of the
vine we show forth the Lord's death until He comes (1 Cor. 11:23-26).

Baptism, the Lord's Sup per, and the preaching of the Word are closely related as
expressions of true Christian worship. Worship is not something man does for God
but rather the response man makes to what God has already done for him. Here the
family of God gathers in His presence to glorify Him. Although one's relation to
Christ involves personal decision, yet to be saved means to be saved in community
rather than in solitude. To be saved means to belong to the company of the saved, to
the church, where in the early days of Christianity, as the apostle says, "all who
believed were together" (Acts 2:44, R.S.V.).

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH

Christian worship and sacraments are also outward signs of the rediscovered unity of
the people of God, a unity recovered in Jesus Christ. Dispersed and op posed to one
another by all that sin adds to men's natural idiosyncrasies, which it converts into
divisions and hostilities, men through their faith in Christ recover the unity of their
origin and of their destiny. By faith they are one, for they are now partakers of the
one and unique Son of God who gave Himself to save them and to found the church.
This unity is clearly pointed out by Jesus' high-priestly intercession, wherein He
prayed for His people "that they may be one, even as we are one,.. . even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:11, 21, R.S.V.). The very nature of the church
demands this, as Paul indicates in his Epistle to the Philippians (Phil. 4: 4-6).

Seventh-day Adventists deplore the divisions of the household of God. They do not
profess that the unity of the church is of such a spiritual, invisible nature that the
divisions that lacerate Christ's body are to be considered as of no importance.
Christian unity to be sure, does not mean uniformity to us. Christian unity involves
diversity, such as variations in worship as well as informs of organization. This very
diversity adds interest and beauty to the life of the body. At the same time, how ever,
we hold that Jesus' re quest "as we are" calls for a fellowship in spirit, mind, and
character in which Christians are to be one in their major beliefs, one in the
fundamental truths of God's Word. Faith alone in Jesus Christ does not express the
fullness of Christian unity that, we think, is connected with both faith and knowledge
(Eph. 4:13). One cannot isolate the question of unity from the question of truth. The
two are inseparably bound together since Christian unity is essential not only to
provide convincing evidence that Christ's claim concerning Himself was true (John
17:21) but to make possible the fulfillment of the gospel commission "throughout the
whole world" (Matthew 24:14, R.S.V.).

ECCLESIOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY

God's church does not derive from below but from above. It is a divine creation.
Formed in history as God called and entered into communion with a remnant, Israel,
through which all peoples were to be blessed, it was given a new form in Jesus Christ.
In the power of the Holy Spirit, He gathered up and reconstructed the one people of
God in His person so that the Christian community might play a central role in the
history of salvation. It is yet to take on a final and eternal form when Christ comes
again to renew His creation. Then His church will be manifested "in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph. 5:27, R.S.V.).

The imminent second coming of Christ is a most prominent belief of the Adventist
faith, as our denominational name indicates. It seems that the distinctive fact that
has set Seventh-day Adventists apart from other Christians has been their conviction
that the Christian understanding of individual redemption through Christ includes
the fulfillment and perfecting of God's people within God's eschatological kingdom.
This kingdom, to be sure, is both present and future: present in Jesus and in His
church, where it is "beginning," future in the final act that God will per form at the
end of history when it is "completed." God's will and work will be consummated.

The church arose as a result of the Incarnation. It has since then served as a bridge, a
living link between Christ's resurrection and His coming again. It lives between the
"already" of the first and the "not yet" of the second. Between the sowing time and
the time of harvest, be tween the time of the suffering Messiah and the day of His
glorious appearing, the church is a pilgrim, never all that it has been nor all that it
will be. It encompasses a reality whose past and present expressions can give us only
an imperfect idea, subjected as it is to the limitations of creation. It is en route
toward a real kingdom of unity and love wherein "in that day" the full meaning of life,
which was disclosed in Jesus of Nazareth, shall be wholly realized. In the meantime,
enfeebled and defective as it may be, it remains, on earth, the object of the Lord's
supreme regard, looking forward in hope for the ultimate perfecting when God's
purpose in electing it will be fully manifest.

REFERENCES
1. Issued by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1971, p. 25.
2. See Rom. 4:12; 9:8. Cf. Phil. 3:3; 1 Peter 2:9.
3. See also Acts 20:28, 29; Heb. 13:20; 1 Peter 5:2-4; Rev. 7:17.
4. See also Matt. 16:18; 21:42; 1 Cor. 3:9-14; 1 Peter 2:6, 7.
5. See Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14; Eze. 16:8-14; Hosea 2:19.
6. See Rom. 12:4, 5; 1 Cor. 6:15; 12:12-27; Col. 1:18, 24; 2:19.
7. See 2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 2:1; 1 Cor. 1:9.
* Texts in this article credited to N.E.B. are from The New English Bible. © The
Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge
University Press 1970. Reprinted by permission.