“Totus Christus caput et corpus est. Caput unigenitus Dei Filius, et corpus ejus Ecclesia, Sponsus et Sponsa, duo in carne una.” S. Aug. de Unitate Ecc. tom. ix. 341.

“Totus Christus, id est, caput et membra.” S. Thomas, Prolog. ad 1 Sentent. art. 4.

Let us look back on the space which we have traversed, and gather up in a few words the sight which it presents to us. We have man before us as far as history will carry us back, as far as reasoning, planting itself on the scanty traces of history, will penetrate into the cloudland of prehistoric times: and the result stands before us exhibited in the manifold records still remaining of the most renowned ancient civilisation. Here, then, we see nations whose genius, whether in history, poetry, and literature, or in works of art, or in civil government, we still admire, comprising men in many of whom the powers of reason reached their utmost limit; nations inhabiting the most varied climates and countries, and amongst them the fairest in the world, nations formed under the most different circumstances and pursuing the most [pg 058] distinct employments, some agricultural, some commercial, some inland, some nautical, but alike in this, that they were enthralled by systems of a false worship, of which it is hard to say whether it was the more revolting to the reason by its absurdity, or to the conscience of man by its foulness. And this false worship does not lie distinct and apart from the concerns of daily civil and domestic life, but is intertwined with all the public and private actions of men, forming their habits and ruling their affections. Moreover, the polytheistic idolatry described above as existing at the time of Augustus in every province of his empire except one, in almost48 every country which touched upon it, or was known to it, is the result, the summing-up, the embodiment of man's whole history up to that time, so far as we know it: it is that into which this history had run out, its palpable, it almost seemed its irresistible, form. And it amounts to a complete corruption, first of the relation between man and his Creator, secondly of the relation between man and his fellow, thirdly of the relations of man in civil government, that is, of states and political communities, to each other.

Now, looking at this polytheistic idolatry simply as a fact, without for the moment any attempt to give a solution of it from authority, looking at it just as modern science would regard the facts of [pg 059] geology or astronomy, there is one thing, we may suppose, which it proves with a superabundance of evidence not found to belong to any other fact of history; and that is, the intrinsic corruption of man as a moral being. That which in theological language is called the Fall of man is, apart from all revealed doctrine on the subject, brought in upon the mind with irresistible force by the mere enumeration of the gods which heathendom worshipped, and of the worship paid by it to them; a force which is indefinitely increased by every inquiry into the moral and religious state of man as he lived under this worship.

Now, then, let us consider what solution the Christian faith does give of this fact, which exists, be it remembered, independently of this solution, and would exist with all its force undiminished, if this were rejected.

I. The Christian faith, as a solution of this wonderful maze of polytheistic idolatry, with all its accompaniments and consequences, carries us back to the first father of the race, whose development we have been following in it. This, it says, is nothing else49 but the body of Adam carried out through thousands of years, the body of Adam fallen under a terrible captivity. Not only does the Christian faith set before us man as one race descended from one, but because he is this one race, [pg 060] descended from one, it represents him as having come into such a state. To understand this we must contemplate the original creation, the fall of man, and its consequences, in their several bearings on each other, which will then lead us on to the nature and mode of the restoration.

In speaking of the creation of man we may first consider the union of the soul and body simply by themselves; that is, in order to obtain a clear view of our subject, we may form to ourselves a purely ideal state of simple nature. Such a state would include two things; one positive, the other negative.50 Positively, human nature in this condition would have all natural faculties in their essential perfection, and the assistance and providence of God naturally due to it: negatively, it would have nothing superadded to nature, nothing not due to it, whether evil or good, that is, neither sin on the one hand, and what follows sin, the guilt which entails punishment, nor on the other hand any gifts of grace, or perfections not due to nature.

Human nature, if created in such a state, would have no supernatural end; its end would be to love God with a natural love, as the Author and Ruler of the world.

Of such a state it is requisite for our present purpose to say only two things further. The first, that it is not contrary to any attribute of God to [pg 061] have created human nature in such a state. The gift of eternal beatitude, arising from the vision of God, which such a creature would not have had for its end, is simply and absolutely a gratuitous gift of the divine bounty, which God is not bound to bestow on any creature as such. Secondly, God did not in fact so create man.

Going on from this state of simple nature, we may consider another state in man, in which, beyond all his natural faculties,51 he would have a certain special perfection, consisting in the absence of immoderate concupiscence, or in the perfect subjection of the sensitive to the rational appetite, so that the inferior appetite should not be allowed to set itself in motion against the superior, or to anticipate reason. For human nature, regarded in itself as the union of a spirit and a body, is as it were divided in its natural affections, which tend in diverse directions, and thus totters, so to say, in its gait; when, therefore, it receives an inward peace in its own proper faculties, it is said to be supplemented, or to receive its integrity.

Now it is much to be noted that this special gift of integrity would not be connatural to man, that is, not given to him by force of his nature itself. It is true indeed that as such a gift perfects nature in regard to all natural acts, and supplies a sort of natural deficiency arising out of the combination of a spiritual with a material substance, [pg 062] wherein a conflict is engendered, in such a sense it may be called natural: but strictly speaking it is a gift superadded to nature.

It must further be noted that this state of nature in its integrity, however high and beautiful, is not only entirely distinct from but of an inferior order to the state of human nature raised to the gift of Divine Sonship. Between human nature in this condition and human nature raised to the gift of sonship, there would be more than the difference52 that with us exists between the kindly-treated servant and the adopted son: for human nature in this integrity would still not by virtue of it possess sanctifying grace, or, in consequence, have God and His vision for its supernatural end.

But, thirdly, it was not merely in this state that God created man, but in a state which not only included this, but had grace for its basis,53 that is to say, every perfection which it had sprang out of this, that it was united to God by grace. This is a state of far superior order, absolutely gratuitous, and beyond anything which is due to nature. The first man, Adam, then, was not only a union of soul and body, not only did he possess this nature in its integrity, but he was created in grace, so that there was a union of the Holy Spirit with him, whereby he was exalted to the condition of a supernatural end [pg 063] and adopted Sonship, and in this union was rooted the integrity of his nature, and the supernatural power of so ruling all the lower faculties of his soul that the higher could mount undisturbedly to God: and certain other gifts over and above, such as immunity from error or deception, so long as he did not sin, immunity from even venial fault, immunity from death, and from all pain or sorrow. Such was the original condition which grace bestowed on human nature, wherein man had not only a supernatural end, but the power to attain it easily.54

Now it is evident that man, by being created in grace, was raised to an astonishing height of dignity, to which not only his nature, but any created nature whatsoever had no claim. All that the justice and goodness of God required him to do in creating such a being as man of two substances, soul and body, was to bestow on the compound being so united such perfections as made the several substances complete in their own order. Such would be the ideal state of simple nature as delineated above. It was a gift beyond nature, such as nature in its first beginning could not claim, to bestow on it the integrity which in the second place we considered. But how far beyond this, passing it by an unmeasured chasm, was that dower of sonship rooted in sanctifying grace which God actually bestowed on His favoured child? It [pg 064] is obvious at first sight that the divine gift here intended, being in Adam's actual creation the root of all which was over and above the natural faculties of body and soul in their union, was bestowed absolutely by the pure goodness of God, and therefore could be bestowed with such conditions attached to it as pleased the Giver. In all that is beyond the mere faculties and needs of nature—in forming which God's own being is a sort of rule to Him—He is absolutely free to give as pleases Himself, to what degree He pleases, on what terms He pleases. What, then, were the conditions on which He invested Adam with the gift of Sonship, and created Him in grace as its foundation? He created him, not only as the individual Adam, but as the Head of his race, so that his race was summed up in him, and a unity was founded in him attaching his whole race as members to his body, in such manner that the supernatural gift of sonship bestowed on him was to descend from him by virtue of natural propagation to every member of that body, which thus became a supernatural race from a supernatural father. So absolute was this unity that the order maintained in the case of every other creature put under the dominion of the man so formed was not followed in his case. For whereas they were created with the difference of sex, each a male and a female, he was created alone, as the Head, and then she, by whose coÖperation the race was [pg 065] to be continued, was formed out of him. It was not a second man who was so formed from the first, but one made with reference to him, in dependence on him, to be a help meet for him, not for herself, with an independent being, but for him. This formation of Eve from Adam, which has a meaning of unfathomable depth in the development of the race, is an essential part of the original design. “Therefore,” says Adam, speaking in an ecstasy sent upon him by God, the words of God, “this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” First, the Eve so formed from him is one flesh with him; secondly, the race springing from both is one flesh likewise with him. The consequence intended by that one flesh was the transmission of that magnificent inheritance in which Adam was standing when he so spoke. In this he was Father and Head, for this created alone, then Eve built up from him, from whom afterwards was to issue their joint race. On the further condition of his personal obedience to God and fidelity to his grace, he held the whole supernatural gift of grace conferring sonship, both for himself and for his race: on these terms it was bestowed by the charter of God, the original Giver. Thus, the greatness of his Headship was visible in two things, the power [pg 066] of transmitting his quality of divine sonship to his race by propagation, and the dependence of that quality, in them as well as in himself, on his personal fidelity to God.

But the First Man, the Father and Head of the race, did not stand in his inheritance. He broke the divine command, and lost the gift of sonship, and with it all the prerogatives attendant on that gift, which were above nature and rooted in grace, and which the eminent goodness of God had bestowed upon him: and by the terms of the original charter lost the gift, not only for himself, but for his race. But he did not, therefore, destroy that relation between the Head and the Race, which was part of the original foundation of God. This continued; but whereas it had been intended to communicate the blessing of adoption, it now served to communicate the demerit of adoption lost, the guilt, and with it the punishment incurred by that loss. This is the original sin, the sin of the nature, not of the person, inherited by the members of Adam's body; and as there can be no sin without free-will, the sin of the whole nature included in Adam as its Root and Head, which sinned by Adam's abuse of his free-will.

Let us try to determine as accurately as we can the position into which Adam and his race fell.

Did, then, Adam simply lose with the forfeiture of sanctifying grace the gift of sonship, the supernatural [pg 067] inheritance, all which God had bestowed on him beyond that ideal state of pure nature which we described in the first instance? God, we said, might have created man originally in this condition, and man so created, that is, in virtue of this creation, would not have been under any sin, nor exposed to the anger of God. Did man, by Adam's sin, fall back into it? Not so. His state after his fall differed from such a state of pure nature in that he had upon him the guilt of lost adoption, of adoption lost by the first Adam's fault, and in proportion to the greatness of the loss, and the gratuitousness of the gift originally bestowed, was the anger with which, on the donor's part, the loss was regarded. How would a king, a man like ourselves, regard one whom he had raised out of the dust to be his adopted child, and who had been unfaithful to the parent who had so chosen him with more than natural affection? Such an anger we can indeed understand when felt against the person sinning; but we fail to enter into it as resting on the race, because the secret tie which binds the head and the race into one is not discerned by us; because too the greatness of the divine majesty, the awfulness of His sovereignty, and the wrath of that majesty slighted, are feebly appreciated by us. But this image may at least give us some notion of the nature of that divine anger which pressed upon Adam and his race after the fall. Not only, therefore, was the gift [pg 068] of sonship and the prerogatives attending it withdrawn, but this withdrawal was a punishment, which their absence in the presumed case of an original state of simple nature would not have been. Thus death was a punishment to Adam and his race; the body's weakness and disease, the soul's sorrows and pains, the disobedience of the inferior appetites to the reason, the resistance of the reason to the law of God, were all punishments, and a remarkable point of the punishment is to be seen in this. Adam, as the head of his race, was in virtue of natural propagation to have bestowed on the children of his flesh, the members of his body, his own supernatural inheritance. Thus a singular honour was conferred on the fathership of Adam. But now when, in virtue of this natural propagation, he, continuing to be the head of his race, transmitted to it the guilt of adoption lost instead of the blessing of adoption conferred, a peculiar shame was set by God upon this fathership of Adam, and upon all the circumstances attending it: so that henceforth in the disinherited race the bride veiled her head, and the act of being a father became an act of shame.

The condition, therefore, of Adam and his posterity after his fall differed from the condition which would have been that of simple nature by the whole extent of the guilt incurred by the nature in its fall from sonship.

And herein lies one peculiarity, and one [pg 069] strangely distressing condition of his state, in that while he lost by the fall the grace in which, as an indwelling gift, his whole supernatural state had been rooted, he yet did not lose that condition of being formed and intended for a supernatural end which grace alone could enable him to attain. For the supernatural vision and love of God he had been created, and in his fall he did not sink to be merely a natural man; but his original end was still held out before him as that which he might reach supported by that grace the aids of which were in a different measure promised to him in order to lead a life of penance, and as the earnest of a future restoration.

This, however, is far from being a complete statement of his case, and we must go back to the circumstances of his fall in order to add that further still more peculiar and remarkable condition which, added to the one just described, made up the whole of his fall.

Adam had not disobeyed the divine command, and so broken the covenant of his sonship, by the simple promptings of his own will. Another had intervened; had suggested to the woman doubts against her Maker and Father. She had yielded to these doubts, and disobeyed; and then Adam had suffered himself to be drawn with her in her disobedience. Who was this other? He was the prince and leader of spirits created good, but fallen into enmity with God. Thus, the favourite [pg 070] son of God had listened to the persuasion of God's chief enemy, and his fall from sonship had been, by the judgment of the offended Parent, not a simple fall from his supernatural estate, but a fall likewise into servitude to that enemy. This servitude also, with the guilt of the nature in which he had sinned, Adam transmitted to the members of his body in and by their nature. Adam with his race was the captive taken in war by the enemy of God, and the life which he was allowed to live had the condition of this servitude impressed on it, with this alleviation only, that the assistance of the divine grace offered to him by the mercy of God in his state of penance could protect those who accepted it from the effects of this servitude, and ultimately deliver them.

Here, then, is the condition of Adam's posterity in consequence of his fall; members of a Head who had broken his allegiance to his Creator and Father, and so inheriting with their nature the disinherited state into which he had cast himself; captives, moreover, of that powerful spirit, God's antagonist, who had tempted Adam, seduced him, and led him to his fall.

Now the heathenism which we have been contemplating is the carrying out in time and space of this body of Adam in those who, by their personal fault, fell away from the aids of grace which were accorded to man after his fall—aids given first to Adam for the whole race, and then [pg 071] renewed to Noah for the whole race; and the false worship, so blent and mingled with heathenism, which seemed as if it were the soul of its body, is the sign and stamp of that captivity to the evil spirit which the first man's sin inaugurated.

How powerful was the bond between Adam and his race, how great and influential the headship which the Divine choice had vested in him, we see in that mysterious transmission of guilt which passed from him to his children. And it must be expressly noted that it was not a transmission of punishment alone. Rather, the divine justice cannot punish where there is no guilt; and as in this case Adam's fall, and that of his posterity with him, was not merely a loss but a punishment, so it had the special nature of guilt, not only in him but in his posterity, and was a sin both of the person and of the nature in him, of the nature only in them. We see the force and range of the divine endowment of Adam here, though it be in the tenacity of the calamity which ensued to his race; but it must be remembered that such in this respect as the punishment was, the blessing would have been. Adam was created both an individual and a race. In him were two things—the single man and the head; but of these two things the headship was peculiar to himself, while such as the individual Adam was, his race was to be. He had it in his power to break the [pg 072] covenant of his sonship with God, but not the tie between himself and his race.

And this sheds a light upon the darkest part of that terrible picture which collected heathenism presents to us. Man, as a social animal, is incessant in his action on his fellow-man; the parent and the family form the child; the companion and the neighbourhood lead forth the child into manhood. This work is perpetually going on in all its parts, and society is the joint result. When, therefore, we see this society once fallen into the possession of a false worship, which perverts the very foundations of morality, and instils deadly error into the child with the mother's milk, no thoughtful mind can gaze without horror upon beings involved in such a maze,55 yet intended for an eternal duration. Man's nature, as a race, seems turned against him; and in addition to the guilt under which each individual of the race is born, and the nature which each inherits, wherein the internal harmony of peace is broken, and neither the appetites obey the reason nor the reason is obedient to God, comes the force of habit, of education, of culture, of companionship, of man's business and leisure, his play and his earnest, the force of his language, the expression of his thoughts upon himself and others, the whole force, in fact, of man's social being when it is put under possession of an evil power, man's adversary. [pg 073] But this social nature was to have been to him the means of the greatest good. As by his natural descent from Adam unfallen would have come the grace of sonship, so the whole brotherhood of those who shared that gift would have helped and supported each in the maintenance of it. The human family would have had a beauty and a unity of its own as such; an order and a lustre would have rested on the whole body, confirming each member in the possession of his own particular gift. The concatenation of evil in the corrupt society is the most striking contrast to the fellowship of good in the upright; and while it is distinct from that guilt which descends to man as the sin of his nature, yet springs like it from the original constitution of that nature as a race. It is the invasion of evil upon good carried to its utmost point, wherein we discern most plainly “the prince of this world” wielding that “power of darkness” by which the Apostle described the whole state of the world, out of which these nations, which made the empire of Augustus, were a part.

We have thus contemplated four distinct pictures. The first of these was human nature bare and naked by itself, a merely ideal view of man, as a being compounded of soul and body, each possessing only the faculties which belong to them as spiritual and corporeal natures, the result of which is a substantial union, because the spiritual [pg 074] substance becomes the form of the corporeal, not by making the body, when already animated by another principle, to participate of spiritual life, but by becoming itself the principle first animating it. And we set forth this condition of human nature in order to throw light upon our second picture—the first man as he was actually created, possessing, as a gift superadded by the purest divine bounty to this his natural constitution, a divine sonship founded in grace; which transcendant union of the Holy Spirit with his soul kept the soul with all its faculties in a loving obedience to God, and the body in obedience to the soul; and added even to this state the further gratuitous prerogatives of immunity from error, fault, pain, distress, and death. Our third picture was man in this same state, but constituted besides by the divine will, whose good pleasure was the sole source of all this state of sonship, to be father of a race like to himself, receiving from him, with its natural generation, the transmitted gift of sonship; that is, from our view of him as an individual person we went on to consider him as the head of a body—the root of a tree. Fourthly, we have looked on the same man stripped by a fault, personal to himself but natural to his race, of this divine sonship—reduced to a state like that which the first would have been, but altered from it by two grave conditions, one of guilt lying on himself and his race on account of this gratuitous gift of [pg 075] sonship lost, another of captivity to that enemy of his Creator and Father who had seduced him to fall. And this picture included in it the double effect of guilt transmitted through a whole race from its head and father, and of the personal sins of each individual of the race: which, moreover, had a tendency to be perpetually heightened by the social nature of man—that part of his original condition which, as it would have supported his highest good in the state of innocence, so came to make his corruption intense and more complicated in the state of fall. It has not been our purpose in this sketch to dwell upon those who, like Adam himself after his fall, accepted the divine assistance offered to them, and the promise of a future Restorer, and who, living a life of penance, kept their faith in God. Such an assistance was offered not only to Adam but to his whole race, and such a line of men there always was; of whom Abel was the type in the world before the flood; Noah after the flood, as the second father of the whole race; Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful, in whose son Isaac a people was to be formed, which, as the nations in their apostasy fell more and more away from the faith and knowledge of the true God, should maintain still the seed of promise out of which the Restorer should spring. But before that Restorer came, the heathenism—of which we have been speaking in the former chapter, and of which we have been giving [pg 076] the solution above—was in possession of all but the whole earth, and the captivity of man to his spiritual foe, on account of which that foe is called “the Ruler” and “the God” “of this world,” which is said “to lie in the malignant one,”56 was all but universal. This universality denoted that the fulness of the time57 marked out in the providence of God was come.

For Adam, in his first creation, and in the splendour of that robe of sonship58 in which he was invested, had been the figure of One to come: his figure as an individual person, his figure as father and head of a race; his figure likewise, when the race itself is viewed as summed up in one, as one body. Let us take each of these in their order.

What was the counterpart of Adam, as an individual person, in the new creation? It was the Eternal Son Himself assuming a human soul and body, and bearing our nature in His divine personality. Over against the creature invested with sonship stood the uncreated Son, invested with a created nature. For the grace of the Holy Spirit given by measure, and depending for its continuance [pg 077] on the obedience of the creature, was the Fountain of Grace Himself ruling the creature by a union indefeasible and eternal; for grace communicated grace immanent in its source. For the son gratuitously adopted was the Son by nature, making, by an inconceivable grace, the created nature assumed to be that not of the adopted but of the natural Son. In a word, the figure was man united to God; the counterpart, the God-man.

What, again, is Adam's counterpart as Father and Head of his race? It was human nature itself, which the Word of God espoused in the bridal chamber of the Virginal Womb, and so is become the Second Adam, the Father of a new race, the Head of a mystical Body, which corresponds to Adam's original Headship, but as far transcends it as the grace of the Incarnate Word transcends the grace bestowed on the first man. As Adam, had he stood in his original state of son, would have transmitted the gift of a like sonship to his whole race—as, falling, he did actually transmit to that race the guilt of adoption lost, so the Second Adam, out of His own uncreated Sonship, but through the nature which He had assumed, bestowed the dower of adopted sons and the gift of justice on his race. From the one there was punishment generating through the flesh;59 from [pg 078] the other, grace regenerating through the Spirit. From the one, nature stripped and wounded, yet still bound to its head by an indissoluble tie; by the other, the Spirit of the Head, the Spirit of Truth, Charity, Unity, and Sanctity, ruling his Body and animating it, as the natural soul animates the natural body. Precisely where the mystery was darkest and the misery greatest, the divine grace is most conspicuous, and the divine power most triumphant. The very point which brings out Adam's connection with his race has an exact counterpart in Christ's Headship of His people, and an inscrutable judgment serves to illustrate an unspeakable gift. In exact accordance with the doctrine that the sin of Adam is man's sin, and the guilt of Adam man's guilt, is that boundless and unimaginable grace that the Incarnate Word did not merely assume an individual human nature, but espoused in that assumption the whole nature; that on the cross He paid the debt of the whole nature, whether for original or actual sin; that His resurrection is our collective justification; that the gift of sonship is bestowed on men not as individual persons, but as members of His Body, before they have personally merited anything, just as the guilt came on them, as members of Adam, before they demerited anything personally. Exactly where the obscurity of the fall [pg 079] was the deepest, the light of the restoration is brightest; and where the sentence was most severe, the grace most wonderful. But to deny the first Adam would entail the loss of the Second; and he who declines the inheritance of the father stripped and wounded cannot enter into the Body of the Word made flesh.

But thirdly, as in that terrible corruption of heathenism, wherein immorality was based on false worship, we saw the body of Adam run out through time and space into the most afflicting form which evil can assume in the individual and social life of man, so in that Body which is ruled by the Divine Headship we see the counterpart, the triumph of grace, individual man taken out of that state of fallen nature, and invested with a membership answering to the dignity of the Head. The one great Christian people, the Kingdom of Christ, stands over against that kingdom of violence, disorder, impurity, and false worship. As there is a unity of the fallen Adam, a force of evil which impact only gives, so much more is there a unity of the Second Adam, which is not a collection of individuals, but a Body with its Head. The first unity consists in the reasonable soul, informing the flesh which was moulded once for all from the clay and descended to the whole race; and the race so descending was polluted by a common guilt, on which, as an ever-fertile root, grew the whole trunk of man's personal sins, of falsehood, [pg 080] enmity, corruption of morals, division, having the common quality of egotism. The second unity consists in the Holy Spirit of the Head communicated to the soul and body of the faithful people, both being restored by that grace of which truth and charity, unity and sanctity, are the tokens, the full virtue being planted in the cross of the Head, and from the cross diffusing itself to His Body.

II. And so we are brought again to Him who stood before Pilate to make the good confession, and who declared that the cause of His coming into the world was to bear witness to the truth. In what form was that witness to be made, and how was it to be efficacious? This is that point which we have now to illustrate. Adam's disobedience was a single act, the power of which, springing out of his headship, extended through the whole line of his race; through the consequences of this act the truth was obscured to them, and human life involved in manifold error. What was that action on the part of Christ, the purpose, as He declares, of His Incarnation, which had an equally enduring effect? If the guilt communicated was not transitory, then should the corresponding grace be perpetual. And how was it so? The Son of God, as the Head of His race, does not stand at disadvantage with Adam, but rather, we are told His grace is superabundant in its results over the other's sin: and He Himself declared that He had [pg 081] completely finished the work given Him to do.60 But here He describes this work to be the bearing witness to the truth. For, indeed, it was worthy of the eternal wisdom to clothe Himself in flesh61 in order that truth, the good of the intellect, and the end of the whole universe, might stand forth revealed to His rational creatures: and He who made all things in truth would Himself restore truth, when it had been obscured by the traducer.

1. Let us take the character which He acknowledged and claimed before Pilate: His character of King, and the kingdom in which it is exercised.

The Person of Christ, as that of the eternal Word, is the Truth itself. But He has assumed a body, and in that body He declares that He is a king, and that the exercise of His royalty is the bearing witness to the truth.62 His words therefore indicate no less than the creation of a kingdom to which the truth should be the principle of subsistence. But what in the material or temporal kingdom is that by force of which it subsists? Plainly power. A kingdom may be larger or smaller in population, wealth, extent, stronger or weaker in the quality of its people; but as long as it retains in itself that in which power culminates, sovereignty, it will be a kingdom. If this power departs from it, if it falls into subjection [pg 082] to a foreign authority, or if its own subjects successfully rebel against its power, it ceases to be. In the kingdom, therefore, of which Christ speaks, the maintenance of truth corresponds to what the maintenance of power is in a material kingdom.

But power in the material kingdom moves men to the natural end of society; it preserves order, administers justice, allows and assists all natural forces to develop themselves, and it must be in its supreme exercise one and indisputable: that is, it culminates in sovereignty. So in the spiritual kingdom truth, the corresponding power, moves men to the supernatural end, and truth culminates in infallibility. But where is this power seated, and how does the King wield it?

The same who here calls Himself King and declares it to be the function of His royalty to bear witness to the truth, in describing elsewhere the very creation of His kingdom says to His apostles, “You shall receive power by the Holy Ghost coming upon you,” bidding them also to remain in Jerusalem “until they were endued with power from on high.”63 But a few hours before that scene in the hall of Pilate He had told them also that He would send them the Spirit of Truth, who should abide with them for ever, and should lead them into all truth. He creates therefore the kingdom of the truth by sending down the Spirit of the Truth to dwell for ever with those to whom [pg 083] He is sent; and this Spirit of the Truth is His own Spirit, whom He Himself will send as the token of His ascension and session; the Spirit who dwelt in the Body which He had assumed, and in which He spoke before Pilate, should be sent by Him when that Body had taken its place at the right hand of God, should invest with His own power those to whom He was sent, and should never cease to be with them in His character of the Spirit of Truth. Here, then, is that power in the kingdom of the Truth which enables it to bear a true and a perpetual witness. It is the power of the King, for it is His Spirit: it is the power of the kingdom, for it remains in it, is throned in it, and makes it to be what it is.

But to create a kingdom of the truth, and to bear perpetual witness in that kingdom to the truth, is not only to state what is true. These expressions mark out an organisation in and by means of which truth is perpetuated. And further, the spirit in man is both reason and will; and that man may act, the intellect which has truth for its object must work on the will which has good for its object. And so the witness which our Lord speaks of is that action of the truth upon the will which produces a life in accordance with it: it is truth not left to itself, but supported by grace. This power of the Spirit of Truth is therefore double, as intended to work on the two powers of the soul, the reason and the will: it is [pg 084] the double gift of Truth and Grace; as He is the Spirit of Grace no less than the Spirit of Truth, and all grace is His immediate gift.

Thus the Word made flesh being full of Truth and Grace from His own Person communicated that Truth and Grace as the power which should form His kingdom for ever, abide in it, and constitute its being a kingdom; the gift of truth and grace being the very presence of His own Spirit, who took possession of His kingdom on the day of Pentecost and holds it for ever.

This whole possession of Truth and Grace dwelling in a visible body is the work of the eternal Word, who assumed a body for that purpose. It is the counter-creation to the kingdom of falsehood which commenced with the sin of the first man believing a falsehood against his Maker, and which spread itself with his lineage into all lands.64 And as in the natural creation He not only created but maintained—for He did not make His creatures and then depart from them, but from that time they exist in Him—so in the supernatural the act of maintaining is equivalent to the act of creating, it is a continued creation. As the guilt had a force which was fruitful, which continued and propagated itself, and produced a widespread reign of falsehood, how much more should that mighty and astonishing grace of a Divine Person assuming a created nature be fruitful, continue, [pg 085] and propagate itself in the maintenance of a visible kingdom, whose distinctive character and its very life should be the possession and communication of the truth. Should the Creator of man in His greatest work be less powerful than His seduced creature in his fall? and if the fall, pregnant with falsehood, bore fruit through ages in a whole race, should not the recovery likewise have its visible dominion, and stand over against the ruin as the kingdom of truth?

It is as King ruling in the kingdom of truth that the Divine Word incarnate redeems man from captivity, which began in a revolt from the truth, and in becoming subject to falsehood. All who are outside His kingdom lie in this captivity;65 the life which He gave voluntarily is the price paid for their liberation; and as age after age, so long as the natural body of Adam lasts, the captivity endures, so age after age the liberation takes effect by entering into His kingdom. And this is the most general name, the name of predilection, which both in prophecy marked the time of Messiah the King, and was announced by His precursor, and [pg 086] taken by our Lord to indicate His having come. The eternal duration of this kingdom may be said to be the substance of all prophecy, and it was precisely in the interpretation of a vision describing under the image of a great statue the four world-kingdoms, that is, the whole structure, course, and issue of the heathenism which we have been contemplating, that Daniel contrasts these kingdoms with another. “In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be delivered to another people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and shall stand itself for ever.” As King in this kingdom through all the generations of men from the moment that He stood in Pilate's hall until He comes to judge the world, our Lord bears witness to the truth, His witness and His royalty being contemporaneous and conterminous to each other.

2. This perpetual possession and announcement of the truth is indicated by another image which is of constant recurrence,66 wherein Christ is the Inhabitant, His people the Inhabited, while both are the House or Temple, for that in which God dwells is at once His House and Temple. Thus Moses is said to have been “faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house are we.” Here the [pg 087] King who bears witness to the truth is the God who sanctifies the faithful people by dwelling in them and building them in the truth. It is not merely the individual believer, but the whole mass of the faithful which grows up to be a holy temple; and the ever-abiding Spirit of truth, whose presence is the guarantee of truth, is the equally abiding Spirit of sanctity, whose presence imparts holiness. The Son dwells in His own house by His Spirit for ever: as He ceases not to be incarnate, He ceases not to dwell in His house, and could falsehood be worshipped in His temple, it would cease to be His. That was the work of heathenism, when a false spirit had caused error to be worshipped for truth; the specific victory of the Word incarnate was to set up a temple in which the truth should be worshipped for ever, “the inhabitation of God in the Spirit.” But living stones make up this temple, that is, individual spirits, endued with their own reason and will, yet no less fitted in and cemented together by His grace, and so forming a structure which has an organic unity of its own, being the House and Temple of One. It is in virtue of this inhabitation that the Church is termed the House of God, the pillar and ground of the truth, inasmuch as it contains, as between walls,67 the faith [pg 088] and its announcement and proclamation, that is, the law of the King of Truth declared by His heralds. “We speculate,” says S. Augustine, “that we may attain to vision; yet even the most studious speculation would fall into error unless the Lord inhabited the Church herself that now is.”68 And again: “In earthly possessions a benefit is given to the proprietor when he is given possession; not so is the possession which is the Church. The benefit here lies in being possessed by such a one.”—“Christ's Body is both Temple and House and City, and He who is Head of the Body is Inhabiter of the House, and Sanctifier of the Temple, and King of the City.—What can we say more acceptable to Him than this, Possess us?”69

3. Again, to take another image, which is the greatest of realities. What a wonderful production of divine skill is the structure of the human body! Even its outward beauty is such as to sway our feelings with a force which reason has at times a hard combat to overcome, so keen is the delight which it conveys. But the inward distribution of its parts is so marvellous that those who have spent their lives in the study of its anatomy can find in a single member, for instance, in the hand, enough out of which to fill a volume with the wise adaptation of means to ends which [pg 089] it reveals. There are parts of it the structure of which is so minute and subtle that the most persevering science has not yet attained fully to unravel their use. In all this arrangement of nerves and muscles, machines of every sort, meeting all manner of difficulties, and supplying all kinds of uses, what an endless storehouse of wisdom and forethought! And all these are permeated by a common life, which binds every part, whatever its several importance, into one whole, and all these, in the state of health, work together with so perfect an ease that the living actor, the bearer of so marvellous a structure, is unconscious of an effort, and exults in the life so simple and yet so manifold poured out on such a multitude of members, a life so tender that the smallest prick is felt over the whole body, and yet so strong that a wound may transfix the whole structure leaving the life untouched. And, in addition to this physical marvel, the incorporeal mind, which has its seat in this material structure, and whose presence is itself its life, rules like an absolute monarch with undisputed sway over his whole dominion, so that the least movement of volition carries with it a willing obedience in the whole frame, and for it instantaneously the eye gazes, the ear listens, the tongue speaks, the feet walk, the hands work, and the brain feels with an incomparable unity. The marvel of the body is that things so many and [pg 090] various by the rule of the artificer impressed upon them are yet one, concur to one end, and produce one whole, from which no part can be taken, and to which none can be added without injury, the least and the greatest replete with one life, which so entirely belongs to the whole body that what is severed from the body at once dies. “Now as the body is one, and has many members, but all the members of this one body, being many, are one body, so also,” says S. Paul, “is Christ,” giving the name of the Head to the whole Body. What the human head is to its own body, that our Lord is to His Church. Perhaps no other image in the whole realm of nature would convey with such force the three relations70 which constitute spiritual headship, an inseparable union, by which the head and the body form one whole, an unceasing government, including every sort of provision and care, and a perpetual influx of grace. This is on the part of the head, while as to the body perhaps no other image but this could equally convey the conjunction of many different members with various functions, whose union makes the structure, and whose unity is something entirely distinct from that which all the parts in their several state, or even in their collocation and arrangement, make up, for it is the life which makes them one. Thus it is an unfathomed depth of doctrine, which is conveyed in [pg 091] the words, “God gave Him to be Head over all things to the Church, who is His Body, the fulness of Him who fills all things in all.” For though no language could exhaust or duly exhibit the meaning of the kingdom or the temple in which the abiding work of our Lord is indicated, we have in this title yet more strikingly portrayed the intimate union and common life of His people with Christ, and His tender affection for them, since the King of Truth who redeems and the God of Truth who sanctifies is at the same time the Head who by His own Spirit of the truth rules and vivifies His own Body. If it be possible to dissociate the idea of the King from his kingdom, or that of God from the temple of living souls in whom He is worshipped, and whose worship of Him makes them one, yet in the human frame to dissever the head from the body is to destroy the propriety of both terms, and it is as a whole human body that the apostle represents Christ and His people to us.

4. Yet, as if this was not enough, S. Paul goes on to delineate Him as the Bridegroom, whose love after redeeming sanctifies one who shall be His bride for ever, one who obeys Him with the fidelity of conjugal love, one whose preservation of His faith unstained is not the dry fulfilment of a command, but the prompting of wedded affection. The image seems chosen to convey intensity of love, first on the part of the [pg 092] Bridegroom as originating it, and then on the part of the Bride as responding to it. But no less does the unity of person in the Bride, given by S. John as well as by S. Paul, indicate in the Church something quite distinct from the individuals who compose her. For she is the pattern of the faithful wife in that she is subject to Christ; and in these words a fact is stated,71 a fact without limit of place or time, which therefore marks that she who is so described can never at any time be separated from the fidelity and love due from her to her Head and Husband. And this is not true of the individual souls belonging to her, for they, having been once faithful members of the body, may fall away and be finally lost. The Bride alone is subject to Christ with a never-failing subjection. And He on His part loves her as His own flesh, a union of the two loves of the Head for the Body, and of the Bridegroom for the Bride, which is true with regard to Him of the Church alone, since individuals within her He may cast off, but her alone He cherishes and fosters for ever. It is indefectible union and unbroken charity with Him which her quality of Bride conveys.

5. And out of this wedded union by that great sacrament concerning Christ and the Church, of which in the same passage S. Paul speaks, that they two shall be one flesh, springs the whole race, [pg 093] in the generation of whom is most completely verified his title of the Second Adam. From the womb of the Church, become from a Bride the Mother of all living, the Father of the age to come bears that chosen race, and royal priesthood, and holy nation, and purchased people. And here we see expressed with great force the truth that all who belong to the Father's supernatural race must come by the Mother. Her office of parent is here set forth; as her fidelity and intense affection shine in the title of the Bride, as her union, submission, and unfailing reception of life in her title of Body, so in the title of Mother all the saved are borne to Christ by her, as S. Cyprian72 drew the conclusion, “he cannot have God for his father who has not the Church for his mother.”

In all this we see the five73 great loves first shown by God to man, then returned by man to God; the love of the Saviour, redeeming captives, and out of these forming His kingdom; the love of the friend, who is God, sanctifying those whom He redeems into one temple; the love which He has implanted in man for self-preservation, since that which He so redeems and sanctifies He has made His own body; the love which He has given to the bridegroom for the bride, since it is the Bride of the Lamb who is so adorned; and the love [pg 094] of the Father for his race, since it is his wife who bears every child to him. Why is the whole force of human language exhausted, and the whole strength of the several human affections accumulated, in this manner? It is to express the super-eminent work of God made flesh, who, when He took a human body, created in correspondence to it that among men and out of men in which the virtue of His Incarnation is stored up, the mystical Kingdom, Temple, Body, Bride, and Mother. No one of these titles could convey the full riches of His work, or the variously wrought splendour of His wisdom, which the angels desire to look into; therefore He searched through human nature and society in all its depth and height for images whose union might express a work so unexampled and unique. Rather, it is truer to say that these natural affections themselves, the gift of that most bountiful giver, were created by Him originally to be types, foreshadowings, and partial copies of that more excellent supernatural love which He had decreed to show to man, since first of all things in the order of the divine design must the Incarnation have been. The whole structure of the family, and the affections which it contains, must spring out of this root, for nature was anticipated by grace in man's creation, and must ever have been subordinate to it. And now, when the full time of grace is come, these titles of things which by His mercy have lasted through the fall, serve [pg 095] to illustrate the greatness of the restoration. For this, which has many names, all precious and dear, is but one creation, having the manifold qualities of redemption and sanctification, of organic unity in one body, wherein many members conspire to a corporate life, which life itself is charity, and in which is the production of the holy race. As we gaze on the Kingdom, Temple, Body, Spouse, and Family, one seems to melt and change into the other. The Kingdom is deepened and enlarged by the thought that the King is the eternal Truth who is worshipped therein; and the worship passes on into the love of the Incarnate God for the members of His own Body, whom He first saves, then fosters and cherishes as His own flesh: and here again is blended that tenderest love of the Bridegroom for the bride, which further issues into the crowning love of the Father for His race. The mode of the salvation seems to spring from the nature of God Himself, since all paternity in heaven and earth springs from that whereby He is Father of the only-begotten Son, who, descending from heaven with the love of the Bridegroom for the bride, binds together in sonship derived from his own the members of His body, the bride of His heart, the subjects of His kingdom, who are built up as living stones into that unimaginable temple raised in the unity of worshipping hearts to the ever-blessed Trinity. To this grows out, as the fulness of Him who fills all in all, that body of [pg 096] the Second Adam, of which in the body of the first Adam He had Himself deposited the germ.

When the angel described to the Blessed Virgin herself that miracle of miracles which was to take place in her, the assumption of human flesh by the Son of God, he used these terms: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.” When the Son of God, at the moment of His Ascension, declared to His Apostles the creation of His mystical body, by using similar words He referred them back to His own conception: “You shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you:” having already on the day of His Resurrection told them, “I send the promise of my Father upon you; but wait you in the city until you be indued with power from on high.”74 Our Lord Himself thus suggests to us the remarkable parallel between the formation of His natural and His mystical body. He who framed the one and the other is the same, the Holy Ghost: the Head precedes, the Body follows; because of the first descent, that Holy Thing which was to be born should be called the Son of God; because of the second, “you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the farthest part of the earth;” and this is said in answer to their question whether He would then [pg 097] restore the kingdom to Israel: that is, the second descent of the Holy Ghost forms the kingdom whose witness to Christ is perpetual; forms the body with which and in which He will be for ever by this power of His Spirit dwelling in it to the end of the world. We have therefore here all the various functions and qualities which, under the five great titles of Kingdom, Temple, Body, Spouse, and Mother, delineate His Church, gathered up into that unity which comprehends them all, and from which, as a source, they all flow, “The Power of the Holy Ghost coming upon men.”75 This creation is as absolutely His, and His alone, as the forming of our Lord's own Body in the Virginal Womb; it is the sequel of it; the fulfilment among men of those divine purposes for which God became Incarnate; in one word, the Body of the Head perpetually quickened by His Spirit. And here we may remark those striking resemblances between the natural and mystical Body which this “power of the Holy Ghost,” the former of them both, indicates. For in the first the manhood76 cannot be severed from the Person of the Word, nor in the second can the body of the Church be severed from Christ the Head and His Spirit. Secondly, in the first the Person of the Word and His manhood make one Christ, and in the second Christ [pg 098] the Head and the Church the Body make one complete Body. Thirdly, in the first the manhood has its own will, but through union with the Godhead is impeccable and indefeasible; and in the second the Body of the Church, though possessing its own liberty, is so ruled by Christ and guided by His Spirit, that it cannot fail in truth or in charity. Fourthly, in the first there is an influx of celestial gifts from the Person of the Word into the manhood, and in the second there is a like influx from Christ the Head into His Body the Church, so that he who hears the Church hears Christ, and he who persecutes the Church, as Saul before the gate of Damascus, persecutes Christ. Fifthly, in the first the Head, through the manhood as His instrument, fulfilled all the economy of redemption, dwelt among men, taught them, redeemed them, bestowed on them the gifts of holiness and the friendship of God; and in the second, what He began in His manhood He continues through the Church as His own Body,77 and bestows on men what He merited in His flesh, showing in and by the Church His presence among men, teaching them holiness, preserving [pg 099] them from error, and leading them to the eternal inheritance.

It is also by this one “power of the Holy Ghost coming upon men” that we learn how the Head and the Body make one Christ. As in the human frame the presence of the soul gives it life and unity, binding together every member by that secret indivisible force, from the least to the greatest, from the heart and brain to the minutest portion of the outward skin, so in this divine Body, which makes the whole Christ, it is the presence of the Holy Ghost, as of the soul, which gives it unity and life. The conclusion was drawn by a great Saint, and no less great a genius, fourteen hundred years ago, and I prefer S. Augustine's words to any which I can use myself: “Our spirit by which the whole race of man lives is called the soul; our spirit, too, by which each man in particular lives is called the soul; and you see what the soul does in the body. It quickens all the limbs: through the eyes it sees, through the ears it hears, through the nostrils smells, through the tongue speaks, through the hands works, through the feet walks; it is present at once in all the limbs that they may live; life it gives to all, their functions to each. The eye does not hear, nor the ear nor the tongue see, nor the ear nor the eye speak, but both live; the functions are diverse, the life common. So is the Church of God. In some saints it works miracles; in others gives voice to the truth; in others, again, maintains the [pg 100] virginal life; in others keeps conjugal fidelity; in these one thing, in those another; each have their proper work, but all alike live. Now, what the soul is to the human body, that is the Holy Spirit to the body of Christ, which is the Church: what the soul does in all the limbs of an individual body, that does the Holy Spirit in the whole Church. But see what you have to avoid, what to observe, and what to fear. It happens that, in the human body, or in any other body, some member may be cut off, hand, finger, or foot. Does the soul follow it when cut off? As long as it was in the body it lived: when cut off, it loses life. So too the Christian man is a Catholic while he lives in the body; when cut off, he becomes a heretic; the Spirit does not follow the amputated limb.”78

But what is this “power of the Holy Ghost coming upon men”? It is the whole treasure of truth and grace, which dwelt first in the natural body of Christ, which He came to bestow on men, which He withdrew not when He ascended, but of which He promised the continuance in the Person of the Holy Ghost, and fulfils by that Person indwelling in the Church. It was the imparting the whole treasure of truth and grace by such an indwelling which made it expedient for Him to go, which made His bodily departure not a loss, but a gain, which was “the promise” of which He spoke on that last night, and which was expressly declared [pg 101] to be a perpetual presence, leading, as it were, by the hand79 into all truth—an all-powerful, all-completing, all-compensating presence, such as that alone is or can be which maintains the intellect of man in truth, because it maintains his will in grace: and, instead of the two wild horses of which the great heathen80 spoke, guides the soul in her course as borne aloft on those twin divine yoke-fellows,81 faith and charity.

Correlative, therefore, to the Person of Him who is at once King, and God, and Head, and Bridegroom, and Father, is that singular creation of His Spirit, by which, in the Kingdom, Temple, Body, Spouse, and Mother, He deposited the treasure of the truth and grace which He became man to communicate. It was not as individual men, living a life apart, but as common children of one race, joint members of one body, that the guilt of the first father fell upon them; it is only on them as children of a higher race and members of a far greater body, that the grace of the Deliverer is bestowed. The distinctions of race and the divisions of condition drop away as they are baptised into one body, and made to drink of one spirit. The new and supernatural life cannot be communicated [pg 102] save by this act of engrafting into a new body. As Eve from the side of Adam sleeping, so the Church from the side of Christ suffering; as Eve bears still to Adam the children of men, so the Church to Christ the children of Christ. These are not two mysteries, but one, unfathomable in both its parts, of justice and of mercy; but the whole history of the human race bears witness to the first, and the whole history of the Christian people to the second. It would be amply sufficient to prove what we have been saying, that the first communication of the supernatural life is conferred by being baptised into one body and made to drink into one spirit. But this is not all. There is a yet dearer and more precious gift, which maintains and increases the life so given. Our Lord stands in the midst of His Church visibly forming from day to day and from age to age that Body of His which reaches through the ages; He takes from Himself and gives to us. He incorporates Himself in His children. He grows up in us, and by visible streams from His heart maintains the life first given. Here, above all, is the one Christ, the Head and the Body. This is but an elemental truth of Christian faith, though it is the highest joy of the Christian heart. It was in an instruction to catechumens that S. Augustine said, “Would you understand the Body of Christ? Hear the Apostle saying to the faithful, ‘But you are the Body and the members of Christ.’ If, then, you [pg 103] are Christ's Body and His members, it is your own mystery which is placed on the Lord's table; it is your own mystery which you receive. It is to what you are that you reply amen, and by replying subscribe. For you are told, ‘the Body of Christ,’ and you reply, amen. Be a member of the Body of Christ, and let your amen be true. Why, then, in bread? Let us bring here nothing of our own, but listen to the Apostle himself again and again, for in speaking of that sacrament he says, ‘We that are many are one bread, one body.’ Understand and rejoice. Here is unity, verity, piety, charity. One bread. Who is that one bread? We being many are one bread. Remember that the bread is not made of one, but of many grains. When you were exorcised, it was as if you were ground; when baptised, as if you were kneaded together with water; when you received the fire of the Holy Ghost, it was your baking. Be what you see, and receive what you are. This the Apostle said of the bread. Of the chalice what we should understand is clear enough even unsaid. For as to make the visible species of bread many grains are kneaded with water into one, as if that were taking place which Holy Scripture records of the faithful, ‘they had one mind and one heart in God,’ so also in the case of the wine. Many grapes hang on the bunch, but their juice is poured together into one. So too Christ the Lord signified us; willed [pg 104] us to belong to Himself; consecrated on His own table the mystery of our peace and unity. He who receives the mystery of unity and holds not the bond of peace receives not a mystery for himself, but a witness against himself.”82

Thus the coherence of the natural and mystical Body of Christ was at once exhibited and effected in the great central act of Christian worship, and the whole fruit of the Incarnation was seen springing from the Person of Christ, and bestowed on men as His members in the unity of one Body. Thus were they taken out of the isolation, distraction, and enmity—that state of mutual strife and disorder which heathendom expresses—and made into the one divine commonwealth; and thus the Body of Christ grows to its full stature and perfect form through all the ages of Christendom.

And if there be one conviction which, together with the belief in the Incarnation itself of the Word, is common to all the Fathers, Doctors, Saints, and Martyrs of the Church—which together with that belief and as part of it is the ground of their confidence in trouble, of their perseverance in enduring, of their undoubting faith in times of persecution, of their assurance of final victory, it is the sense which encompassed their whole life, that they were members of one Body, which, in virtue of an organic unity in itself and [pg 105] with its Head, was to last for ever. The notion that this Body, as such, could fail, that it could cease to be the treasure-house of the divine truth and grace, would have struck them with as much horror as the notion that Christ had not become incarnate, and was not their Redeemer. The Body which the Holy Ghost animated on the day of Pentecost never ceased to be conscious of its existence—conscious that the power of its Head, the Eternal Truth, was in it, and would be in it for ever. Confidence in himself as an individual member of the Body, the Christian had not, for he knew that through his personal sinfulness grace might be withdrawn from him, and that he might fall away; confidence he did not place either in his own learning, knowledge, and sanctity, or in these gifts as belonging to any individual Christian; his confidence lay in the King who reigned in an everlasting Kingdom, in the Head who animated an incorruptible Body. To sever these two would have been to decapitate Christ.83 The thought that the Bride of Christ could herself become an adulteress, and teach her children the very falsehoods of that idol-worship which she was created to overthrow, would have appeared to him the denial of all Christian belief. And such a denial indeed it is to any mind which, [pg 106] receiving the Christian truth as a divine gift, looks for it also to have a logical cohesion with itself, to be consistent and complete, to be a body of truth, not a bundle of opinions. Let us take once more S. Augustine as expressing, not a private feeling, but the universal Christian sense, when he thus reprehended the Donatist pretension, that truth had deserted the Body of the Church to dwell in the province of Africa. “But, they say, that Church which was the Church of all nations exists no longer. She has perished. This they say who are not in her. O shameless word! The Church is not because thou art not in her. See, lest therefore thou be not, for though thou be not, she will be. This word, abominable, detestable, full of presumption and falsehood, supported by no truth, illuminated by no wisdom, seasoned with no sense, vain, rash, precipitate, and pernicious—this it was which the Spirit of God foresaw, and as against these very men, when He foretold unity in that saying, ‘To announce the name of the Lord in Zion, and his worship in Jerusalem, when the peoples and kingdoms join together in one that they may serve the Lord.’ ”84

Now, to suppose that anything which is false has been, or is, or can be taught by the Church of God, is to overthrow the one idea which runs through the titles of the Kingdom, Temple, Body, and Spouse of Christ, it is to make the Mother [pg 107] of His children an adulteress, to deny that power of the Holy Ghost coming down on the day of Pentecost, and abiding for ever, with His special function of leading into all truth, that presence of the Comforter in virtue of which the Apostles said for themselves and for the Church through all time, “It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” With all men who reason, such a supposition is equivalent to the statement that Christ has failed in what He came on earth to do, for “the Word was made flesh that He might become the Head of the Church.”85 Next, therefore, in atrocity to that blasphemy which assaults the blessed Trinity in Unity upon His throne is the miserable and heartless blasphemy which, by imputing corruption of the truth to the very Kingdom and Temple, the very Body and Spouse of the Truth Himself, the Incarnate God, would declare the frustration of that purpose which He became man to execute, the falsifying of that witness of which He spoke in the hall of Pilate, and would so annihilate that glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good-will, which was the angelic song on the morning of His birth, and is daily86 in the mouth of His Bride. The truth can as little cease out of the House and Temple of God as the Father and Son [pg 108] can cease sending the Spirit to dwell in it: the truth can as little cease to be proclaimed and taught in its own kingdom as the King can cease to reign in it. The conjugal faith of the Bride of Christ cannot fail, because He remains her Bridegroom. The power of the Head, the double power of truth and grace, cannot cease to rule and vivify His Body, because He is its Head for ever. The Mother cannot deceive her children, because she is of one flesh with the Son of Man, in the union of an unbroken wedlock.

It has been said above that the power of that bond which from the origin of man united the race to its head was shown not only in the guilt which the act of that head was able to inflict on the body, not only in the exact transmission of the same nature, thus stained, from age to age, but likewise in that social character of the race in virtue of which such a thing as a man entirely independent of his fellow men, neither acting upon them, nor acted upon by them, never has existed nor can exist. It was in that connected mass which this social nature creates, that corporate unity of human society, that heathenism appeared most terrible, because corruption seemed to propagate itself, and evil by this force of cohesion to become almost impregnable. But it was especially in creating a corporate unity which should show the force of our social nature for good, as the corruption had shown it for evil, that the [pg 109] power of the Restorer shines forth. The true Head of our race came to redeem and sanctify not so many individuals but His Body. Surely there is no distinction more important to bear in mind.87 “No single member by itself can make a body; each of them fails in this; coÖperation is required, for when many become one, there is one body. The being or not being a body depends on being united or not united into one.” And, again, beautiful as the individual member, the hand or the eye, may be in itself, far higher is the beauty which belongs to the body as the whole in which these members coalesce and are one. Each member too has a double energy, its own proper work, and that which it contributes to the body's unity, for this is a higher work which the coÖperation of all produces; each a double beauty, its beauty as a part, and that which it adds to the whole: and these two, which seem to be separate, have the closest connection, for a maimed limb impairs the whole body's force, and as to its beauty, as it is incomparably finer than the beauty of any part, so is it marred by a slight defect in one part, as the fairest face would [pg 110] be spoilt by the absence of eyebrows, the fairest eyes lose their lustre, and the countenance its light, by the want of eyelashes. It is, then, in the beauty of the Body of Christ that the Christian mind would exult, not merely in the several graces of those who are its members, but in that corporate unity which they present. We see in the course of the world that great image of the prophet, lofty in stature and terrible to behold, whose head is of gold, whose breast and arms of silver, the thighs of brass, the legs of iron, the toes mixed of iron and clay. This is the form of the first Adam, seen in his race; and over against it likewise is the one man Christ, forming through the ages, gathering His members in a mightier unity. This is the Word made flesh, the Second Adam, “so that the whole human race is, as it were, two men, the First and the Second.”88

So much, then, is the creation of the Church superior to the creation of a single Christian as the creation of a body is superior to that of a single bone or muscle. This superiority belongs to the nature of a body as such. It is another thought, which we only suggest here, whose body it is. And here it appears in two very different conditions, the one as it is seen by us now, the other as it will be seen hereafter. There is, I conceive, no subject in all human history comparable in interest to that which the divine commonwealth [pg 111] as such, when traced through the eighteen centuries which it has hitherto run, presents. What nation can be compared to this nation? what people to this people? what labours to its labours? what sufferings to its sufferings? what conflicts to those which it has endured? what triumphs to those which it has gained? what duration to that portion only of its years which is as yet run out? what promise to its future? what performance to its past? What is the courage and self-denial, what is the patience and generosity, what the genius, the learning, the sustained devotion to any work, shown by any human race, compared to those which are to be found in this race of the Divine Mother? How do those who are enamoured of nationalities fail to see the glories of this nation, before which all others pale their ineffectual fires? How do those with whom industry is a chief virtue, and stubborn perseverance the crowning praise, not acknowledge her whose work is undying and whose endurance never fails? These men admire greatness and worship success. Let them look back fourteen hundred years, when that great world-statue seemed to be breaking up into the iron and clay which ran through its feet. Then this kingdom was already great and glorious, and crowned with victory, and filled the earth. The toes of that statue have meanwhile run out into ten kingdoms, and the islands which were forest and swamp when this [pg 112] kingdom commenced have become the head of a dominion which can be mentioned beside that of old Rome; but still in undiminished grandeur the great divine republic stands over against all these kingdoms, penetrates through them, stretches beyond them, and while they grow, mature, and decay, and power passes from one to the other, her power ceases not, declines not, changes not, but shows the beauty of youth upon the brow of age, and amid the confusion of Babel her pentecostal unity. If success be worshipful, worship it here; if power be venerable, bow before its holiest shrine.

But if this be the Body of Christ here in its state of humiliation, during which it repeats the passion of its Head, if these be the grains of wheat now scattered among the chaff,89 what is that one mass to be which these shall make when the threshing-floor is winnowed out? We see the Body in its preliminary state of suffering, where it has a grandeur, a duration, and a beauty like nothing else on earth. What it shall be in its future state S. John saw when he called it the great City invested with the glory of God, the Bride adorned for her husband; and S. Paul hints, when he speaks of the perfect man compacted and fitly framed together by what every joint supplies, [pg 113] and grown up to full stature in the Head. There is in the redeemed, not only the exceeding greatness of the quality of their salvation, that is, the gift of divine sonship; nor, again, that this gift is heightened by its being the purchase of the Son of God, so that He is not ashamed to call those brethren whom He has first washed in His own blood: but over and above all this, one thing more, that the whole mass of the redeemed and adopted are not so many souls, but the Body of Christ. Faint shadows, indeed, to our earthly senses are House and Temple, Kingdom and City paved with precious stones of that mighty unity of all rational natures, powers, and virtues, each with the perfection of his individual being, each with the superadded lustre of membership in a marvellous whole, under the Headship of Christ. The exceeding glory of this creation, which will be the wonder of all creation through eternity, is that God the Word made flesh, the Head and His Body, make one thing, not an inorganic, but an organised unity, the glorified Body of a glorified Head.

Once more let us note the consistency and unbroken evolution of the divine plan.

In the first creation of the human race the Body of Christ is not only foretold but prefigured, not only prefigured but expressed in the very words uttered by Adam in his ecstasy, the words of God delineating that act of God, the greatest of all His acts of power, wisdom, and goodness, [pg 114] whereby becoming man, and leaving His Father and His Mother,90 He would cleave to the wife He so took, the human nature which in redeeming He espoused. This, and no other, was the reason why Eve was formed out of Adam. It is the beginning of the divine plan, which is coherent throughout, which was designed in the state of innocency, which remains intended through the state of guilt, which is unfolded in the state of grace, which is completed in the state of glory, when what that forming of Eve from the side of Adam, and of the Church from the side of her Lord, what that growth through thousands of years, through multitudinous conflicts, through unspeakable sorrows, through immeasurable triumphs, shall finally issue in, shall be seen by those whom the Second Adam has made worthy of that vision, and by whom it is seen enjoyed.