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. 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 [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 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 [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 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 [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 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 [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.