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IX.
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH: THE
COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
W. H.
F. 8
Where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.
MATT. xviii. 20.
This is
that which hath been spoken by the prophet
Joel;
And it
shall be in the last days, saith God,
I will
pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh:
And
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And
your young men shall see visions,
And
your old men shall dream dreams.
ACTS ii. 16 f.
He put
all things in subjection under His feet, and
gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is
His body, the fulness of Him that nlleth all in all.
EPH. i. 22 f.
So then
ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye
are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone;
in whom each several building, fitly framed together,
groweth
into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom, ye also are builded
together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
EPH.
ii. 19 ff.
WE have seen that the general expression of
our belief in the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of
Truth, the Advocate sent by the Father in Christ's
name, to bring home to us ever more and more of
the meaning of the Incarnation, is defined in
detail by a confession of our belief in His action
on the whole Christian Body and upon individual
Christians. Because we believe in the Holy
Ghost, because we throw ourselves with complete
trust upon the efficacy of His divine influence, of
His invisible Presence, we believe that there is a
society in which it finds embodiment. We
believe that there are men in whom it finds due
scope for its working. We believe that
there is a life, a life eternal, which corresponds
with the fulness of its energy. We have
then to notice now the first of these three articles
of our faith. We believe that there is a Holy
Catholic Church, a Communion of Saints: or, in
other words, a Body of Christ seen and unseen,
by which the Truth is on the one side presented
8—2
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IX.
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116
The being of the Church an object of faith.
IX.
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outwardly before the world and on the other
brought home with concentrated power to the
souls of believers. We believe that there is a
Holy Catholic Church. We do not say, you will
observe, that we believe in it as we believe in the
Persons of the Godhead. We do not say that we
believe it as speaking with a clear, authoritative
voice. We say that we believe in the reality of
its existence; we believe, in spite of all appear-
ances, that it is. This conviction is a work
of faith. It must be so. We see the many
separate Churches: we mourn over the grievous
failures and sins of Christians, over our own
failures and sins: we acknowledge in this Com-
munion and in that the declaration and the power
of some part of the universal Gospel. All this is
matter of experience, of sight. But beyond this
separation, this imperfection, this fragmentariness,
we believe, though we cannot see, that there is a
Church, One, Holy, Catholic, the Body of Christ,
through which He is slowly revealing Himself in
many parts and advancing to a complete sove-
reignty over the world. This is what our
Creed teaches us to believe. And as we hold the
belief more firmly, as we come to understand
better the promises which the confession carries
with it, our separate labours will be made more
hopeful, more humble and more intense.
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The unity of the Church. 117
We believe, I say, that there is one Church,
the Body of which Christ is the Head. If we
look only at the outside of things there is nothing
to justify the bold avowal. The words have been
repeated for more than 1500 years, and that
whole interval is darkened by the record of corrup-
tions and revolutions, of schisms and heresies.
The words are repeated now by different societies
throughout the world which refuse to one another
the visible symbols of fellowship. Can we then—
let us ask ourselves the question plainly—can we
profess our belief that there is one Church when
we recall the divisions of Christendom; as we
must do in sorrow of heart ? One Church when
rival bodies challenge our allegiance and compass
sea and land to make a proselyte ? one Church
when a death-like torpor has fallen over the East,
and the farthest West is too often hurried away by
a wild fanaticism ? One Church when each noblest
Communion is itself broken into parties eager to
narrow the limits of their inheritance by the
peculiarities of their own opinions ? one Church
when on this side and on that we are answered by
anathema if we bear the greeting of peace ? Yes,
I believe that there is one Church though I can-
not see its unity, in spite of lethargy and unchas-
tened zeal, in spite of the private creeds and reck-
less judgments which seem to separate what God
has joined together.
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IX.
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118
The unity of the Church.
IX.
John x. 16.
Eph. ix. 4,
5.
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In this respect the trial of our faith is no new
thing. There never was an epoch since the
Church spread beyond Jerusalem when the 'one
Body of Christ' was one in visible uniformity or
even one in perfect sympathy. Time has indeed
hardened and multiplied the differences between
the several parts into which the Church is divided;
but it is possible to trace already in the apostolic age
the essential features of those divisions over which
we grieve. And if we look forward to the fulfil-
ment of the great promise which gladdens the
future, it is not that there shall ever be, as we
wrongly read, 'one fold,' one outward society of
Christians gathered in one outward form, but,
what answers more truly to present experience
and reasonable hope, one flock and one shepherd .
And in the meantime, let us rate the differences
of Christians as highly as we will, there yet
remains a common faith in the presence of which
they are almost as nothing. He who believes, to
take the ground of the apostolic message on the
day of Pentecost, that Christ rose from the dead,
he who is baptized into Him, he who rejoices.
though trembling in the pledge of a glorified
humanity, is divided from the world without by
an interval as wide as that between life and death.
In this one faith, one baptism...one hope of our
calling , lies a universal fellowship of believers,
the symbol and the earnest of the brotherhood of
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The holiness of the Church.
119
men, the single truth which taken alone distin-
guishes for ever Christian from ancient thought.
Looking then to this trust in a common redemp-
tion, let us hold fast our belief in one Church, in
one Body of Christ knit together by the rites
which He Himself appointed, one in virtue of the
One Spirit Who guides each member severally as
He will, of the One Saviour Who fulfils Himself in
many ways, of the One God and Father of all,
Who is over all and through all and in all.
But Faith does not rest here: it holds a
second paradox. We believe in the unity of the
Church. We believe also in its holiness. We
believe this again notwithstanding the sad witness
of sight. The weaknesses and the crimes of
Christians are a commonplace of our enemies.
We can have no desire to excuse them. But
these individual failures do not alter the character,
the testimony of the body. Ye are clean ,
the Lord said to the twelve on the eve of the
Passion, but not all : they were holy taken
together though Judas was among them. And
the Church as a society asserts unfalteringly the
claims of the Gospel though the message may
often be the condemnation of those who bear it.
The ideal is firmly held forth through all disasters.
And this maintenance of a great faith is a power
of life. We read that when Rome had received
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IX.
Eph. iv. 6.
John xiii.
10.
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120
The holiness of the Church.
IX.
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the heaviest defeat in her long history, the citizens
went forth in a body to meet the conquered
general and thanked him because he had not
despaired of the commonwealth. That spirit was
the life of the old republic. And the Christian
Church, wearied and betrayed by men, does not
despair of humanity. By that spirit she vindicates
her life. She offers to all without reserve and
without doubt the calling to holiness and the
assurance that the call can be obeyed.
Nor has the call ever been wholly without
effect. To those who look a little below the sur-
face the darkest times furnish examples of conse-
crated lives which visibly embody the teaching of
the Church. We have all known such: these
openly shew forth what the will of God is, and
present the first-fruits of its fulfilment. They are
felt to be truly representative of the temper and
of the power of the Faith. They exhibit what is
the idea of the Christian society, and they recog-
nise their dependence upon its institution.
Thus the Church is holy in regard to its un-
changing spirit: holy in regard to those who
realise its conception. It is holy also in regard to
its institutions. One thought runs through all the
services not only of our own Communion but, I
will venture to say, of all Christian Communions,
even that of the devotion, the transfiguration of
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The Catholicity of the Church. 121
life. However true it may be that we fail to
enter consciously into the meaning of all the rites
in which we share, their testimony is not al-
together lost. No one can fail to feel upon
reflection how the two Sacraments speak of death
and life through death, of life given and life
received again. And even before we realise their
power by thought, they create by their very
existence a kind of spiritual atmosphere about us
which is independent of ourselves. They constrain
us to consider our destiny, to look beyond earth,
to acknowledge that we too have that which must
be brought to the presence of God.
Grateful therefore for these blessings, for the
unceasing voice of a heavenward calling, for the
encouragement of Christian lives, for the encom-
passing influence of Christian services, we can
confess, without dissembling the evils about us
and in us, that we believe in a Holy Church.
One other title still remains; and if we
believe that the Church is one in spite of its
outward divisions; if we believe that it is holy in
spite of its manifest stains and imperfection; we
shall be prepared to understand why we confess
that it is catholic, universal. The title was not
given to the Church in the Western Creed till the
fourth century; and it is itself the monument of
a long conflict. The word does not express
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122
The Catholicity of the Church.
IX.
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simply, as we commonly understand it, the
universality of the extension of the Church: it
affirms also the universality of the teaching of
the Church. The real sign of the supremacy
of the Christian society is not that it spreads
everywhere but that it embraces the whole truth.
This is the sure pledge of the Church's dominion.
The Catholic Church welcomes joyfully and
ministers openly every treasure of wisdom and
knowledge for her children.
The word 'Catholic' is, I have said, the
monument of a long conflict. In the first age
there were some who shrank from the teaching of
St Paul; others who received St Paul only:
some who cast aside the Old Testament; others
who found in it the complete record of revela-
tion. Slowly and certainly the elements of
truth which were disguised in these conflicting
and fragmentary views were reduced to harmony.
Slowly and certainly the full collection of pro-
phetic and apostolic Scriptures was brought
perfectly together, and the same epoch saw a
Catholic Bible and a Catholic Church.
From that time these two ideas, these two
facts, have lain at the foundation of Christendom.
The one—the Catholic Bible—furnishes the test
of apostolicity for all doctrines: the other—the
Catholic Church—adds the materials of life for
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The Communion of Saints.
123
their embodiment. Both include elements of
contrast and therefore of progress. Because
the Bible is Catholic, because it includes the
complementary aspects of the Faith, it is possible
to construct out of it partial schemes which
first become perilous when they are treated as
complete. Because the Church is Catholic,
because, that is, the whole sum of divine truth,
the whole sum of all truth, is its heritage, it has
always some fresh message to deliver. It offers
to each age, to each nation, to each person, what
each needs most, and grows stronger as they accept
and employ its gifts. For us in our day
our belief in the Catholicity of the Church is the
assurance of its growth, the assurance that its
compass is as wide as the Bible and its energy as
manifold as life; that it also, without inconstancy
and without change, becomes, in some sense, all
things to all men.
But we go yet farther in our confession. The
Holy Catholic Church is not only a great fact:
it is also a great power: it carries with it an
influence not limited by time or space. We
are not heirs only of the past; the past lives for
us in its spiritual energy. So our Western fore-
fathers added, as late perhaps as the eighth
century, a fresh clause to the Creed in order to
give clear expression to this characteristic thought,
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124
The Communion of Saints.
IX.
Matt. xxii.
32.
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and taught us to declare our belief in the Com-
munion of Saints.
The clause opens new realms of thought to
the soul. As we repeat it we seem to enter
within the veil. The seen and the unseen, earth
and heaven, are united in a spiritual fellowship.
Patriarchs and prophets and kings and martyrs,
men and angels, are shewn to us in a present
connexion with ourselves. The horizon of our
hope is indefinitely enlarged. Even though we
may be unable as yet to give any definite shape
to our intercourse the sense of its reality is
ennobling; and as we ponder the fact thus
shadowed out we feel something of the infinite
depth of life which is contained in the words I am
the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob. I am the GOD : the existence, the
possibility of this divine covenant is the promise of
an undying life, a life of which we are made par-
takers, a life in which men and angels live unto
God.
I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the
Communion of Saints. Every article of our Creed
is, as we have already seen, a source of strength, an
endowment to be put to use. We can all feel how
these articles on which we have just touched are
fitted to become so. Too often perhaps we make
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The power of the belief
125
no effort to appropriate their help, though the
commonest experience shews what it must
be. To belong to a great family, to a
great society, to a great nation, is, if rightly
viewed, a man's noblest birthright. He whose
name is a memorial of past honours, and whose
earliest years are spent, as it were, in the light of
illustrious deeds: he who has learnt to feel that
there is a history in which he has a part and who
has rejoiced in the triumphs of a people whose
hopes and impulses he shares: must from time to
time be raised above all that is selfish and even
personal; he must become conscious of the
accumulated power with which he is endowed
and of the social destiny to which he is
called. Let the name be that name which
is above every name: let the history be written
in every splendid achievement by which the
kingdom of God has been advanced: let the
triumphs be those by which faith through the
ages subdues all things to herself: let the fellow-
ship be that of Saints and Confessors; and then
we shall understand, dimly it may be but yet so
that effort will be kindled with fresh enthusiasm,
what our fathers meant when they handed down
to us truths which they had proved in actual ex-
perience: then we shall say with livelier imagina-
tion and fuller heart, each in the prospect of our
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126
in the Church.
IX.
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little work and with the sense of our peculiar
trials, acknowledging that that work is trans-
figured by a divine consecration and that those
trials are conquered by a spiritual sympathy:
I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: I
believe in the Communion of Saints.
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