“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 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 almost(48)
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 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 else(49) 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, 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 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, 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 difference(52) 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 time(57)
marked out in the providence of God was come.
For Adam, in his first creation, and in the splendour of that robe of
sonship(58) 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 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 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 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, 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
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 flesh(61) 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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
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 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 relations(70) 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 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 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, 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.
Cyprian(72) drew the conclusion, “he cannot have God for his father who
has not the Church for his mother.”
In all this we see the five(73) 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 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 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
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 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 manhood(76) 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 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 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 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 to be a perpetual presence,
leading, as it were, by the hand(79) 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
heathen(80) 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 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
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 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 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, 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 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 daily(86) 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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,
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.