CHAPTER IX.
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.
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“Christ is gone up; yet ere He passed From earth, in heaven to reign, He formed One Holy Church to last Till He should come again. So age by age, and year by year, His grace was handed on; And still the Holy Church is here, Although her Lord is gone.” |
A question often arises which is, in no little degree, perplexing to Christian people. What is the Holy Catholic Church? The words are very often in our mouths; for they are repeated continually in the Creed. What do we mean by them?
The teaching of our Lord about His Kingdom, and the description of the founding of that Kingdom by the Holy Ghost, acting through the Apostles, are the materials out of which the answer must be formed. And it is hoped that the readers of these pages have been led to see this already.
But there are two ways of dealing with this question: first, as an article of faith; and secondly, as a matter of fact. The Church is an object on which faith is exercised; but if faith is laid aside altogether, the facts of the existence of the Church and its rapid extension in our own day still remain to be considered.
We must deal with it first as an article of the faith. “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.” It is an article of faith added to our profession of faith in God, expressing our belief in the reality of the Gospel. It is like saying, in other words, that we believe that what our Lord preached was literally true, and has come to pass. Hereby we declare that the Kingdom which He proclaimed is a real Kingdom, and that we belong to it as His subjects, and share in the salvation which He, the long-promised Messiah, came to bring.
We have already considered the grounds on which this faith is based. We have seen that the Church founded by the Apostles was in reality and truth “The Kingdom of Heaven,” which was described beforehand by our Lord in His parables and discourses, and which He declared could not be entered except through a new birth of the Spirit. And we have seen how the Holy Ghost was given according to His promise, first to lead men to accept the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ; then to bring them into His Kingdom, new-born as the children of God; and then to dwell within them and influence their lives, and prepare them for the presence of their Father.
Consequently, in professing our faith in “The Holy Catholic[22] Church,” we are simply expressing the belief of Christians, that the good news which He preached has come to pass, that “The Kingdom of Heaven” has been founded; and that we, who profess this belief, have been called to enter it as His subjects, and have been put into the way of salvation, wherein we have a present share in His infinite merits, and a good hope of eternal Life through Him.
The Holy Catholic Church is “The Kingdom of Heaven.”