We learn the sanctity, the holiness, which Christ looks for in His
Church.
The Church of Christ is holy: it consists of those who have separated
themselves from the world and its defilements, and who have set
themselves apart--body, soul, and spirit--for Christ's service. That,
I say, is the Church's ideal. But we know, alas! only too well, how
far short the Church on earth falls of that--how much worldliness, and
vanity, and ambition--yes, and even grosser sins--mingle with our holy
things.
But we must keep God's ideal ever before us, that ideal which assures
us that God, by His Spirit, actually dwells in His Church, dwells in
the heart of each individual believer. Only when we remember that, can
we see how great was Ananias's sin. "_He lied to the Holy Ghost: he
lied not unto men, but unto God_." As by God's Spirit his heart had
been enlightened and opened to the knowledge of the truth: so now
against that Spirit he had deliberately sinned.
Such a sin could not pass unpunished. Had that been allowed, the false
impression would have got abroad that God was easy and tolerant of sin.
Rather it was necessary "that men should be taught once for all, by
sudden death treading swiftly on the heels of detected sin, that the
gospel, which discovers God's boundless mercy, has not wiped out the
sterner attributes of the Judge."[1]