On that occasion the Church—meaning the Church as apparent in history—is called the kingdom of heaven. [Footnote 146] The Lord says to Peter, "I will give [{670}] unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" a promise substantially the same with that given in the same breath to the same apostle, though under a different metaphor, when Jesus calls him the rock upon which he will build his Church. The primate is the subject of both predictions. The apostle Peter is to be the foundation of the Church, and he is to receive the keys of the same edifice, that is to say, he is to be the master of the house.
[Footnote 146: Matt. xvi. 18, 19. ]
That the epithet of "kingdom of heaven" expresses the essential character of the Church, is easily shown by a glance at the passages of Scripture in which the Church is mentioned. Such is always the case where the kingdom of God or of heaven is represented as in course of realization on earth. In this respect the parables of Jesus are especially significant. They address themselves principally to the spirit, the organization, and the most essential peculiarities of the new order of things which Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish. In these discourses the new foundation is constantly brought forward as the kingdom of God or of heaven. Thus we cannot but recognize in this expression a designation of the inner essence of the institution of Jesus.
At a time when his destined kingdom had not yet become historically manifest, Jesus might still say, in the same acceptation of the term, that it was already present, and palpable to all who sought to grasp it. This actual presence of the kingdom is deduced by the Lord from the efficacy of his miracles. In them the vital principle of Catholicism was already at work. It had entered the world at the same instant with the person of the Son of Man. But not until after Christ was exalted did it assume a historical palpability. No less does the declaration of Jesus, that from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, display Catholicism as a power even before it came to figure in history. For this very forwardness with which even then the violent took it by force, was a product of the Christ-like power which had entered humanity simultaneously with the person of the Messiah. And where the Jews are called sons of the kingdom, it is likewise in reference to this elementary principle of Catholicism. It had been planted in the first instance on the historical soil of Judaism, thence, of course, to spread its benign influence over the earth, and thus to make historically manifest the vital substance of the Church in its only adequate expression. "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom." On the other hand, the kingdom shall be taken from the Jews, because they have made it unfruitful.
No Christian sermon should omit to give this inner view of Catholicism, or of the advent of the kingdom. Therein lies its peculiar force. The preacher of the gospel has no more effective word of consolation for the pious souls who give him a ready hearing, than the assurance that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto them. In this word, also, the apostle of Christ has his most potent weapon against the assailants of the Church. If they receive you not, says the Lord unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself the kingdom of God.
But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. According to the quality of the hearers of the word, the growing grain is fruitful or empty, the members genuine or spurious. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like to a net, cast into the sea, and gathering together all kind of fishes. The kingdom of the Son of Man is not without scandals, and them that work [{671}] iniquity. [Footnote 147] Hence the kingdom of God on earth embraces the entire Church in her temporal existence. The latter is shown to be a kingdom of long-suffering, in preserving her connection even with ingredients estranged from her in spirit, leaving the ultimate separation of the false members to the final judgment. Even these erring ones carry on their souls the impress of the kingdom, the signature of baptism. Nevertheless their adhesion to the kingdom is external and objective merely. In the more accurate sense of the word, the idea of the kingdom applies only to the marrow, the soul of the Church. The good seed only are the real children of the kingdom.
[Footnote 147: Matt. xiii. 41.]
This account of the formation of the kingdom of God explains how the essence of the true Church becomes a historical reality in the actual condition of Catholicism, notwithstanding its imperfections. The position, therefore, that the spirit of the Church is inseparable from her temporal existence by no means denies that this historical exterior of Catholicism may be infected with elements having nothing in common with, and even hostile to, the character of the true Church. This results from the fact that the true Church, though always preserving a unitary organization, realizes herself by degrees only. The form of Catholicism is gradually purified and disclosed by the sanctifying virtue of its inner life. Thus it is that parasites take root in the soil of the Church.
It is therefore a shifting of the real issue when Mr. Hase defines the Catholic antagonism to the ideal Church of Protestantism as consisting in a notion of Catholicism that in all essential attributes there is a perfect congruity between the idea of the Church and the concrete Church of Rome; or in other words, that the latter Church is at all tunes the perfect type of Christianity. Two distinct things are here confounded. The position of Catholicism—that the essence of the true Church, so far as realized at all, exists only within the Catholic Church, where alone, therefore, a further development of this essence can be accomplished or the ideal of the Church attained—is by no means equivalent to the pretension, attributed to Catholicism by Hase, that Catholicism has already attained the ideal, or that it is at all times the most perfect representation of Christianity. After this misrepresentation of the position of Catholicism, Hase has no difficulty in distorting the well-known Catholic doctrine that sinners also belong to the Church into an unconscious acknowledgment of the ideal Church of Protestantism.
While the toleration of spurious members is a mandate of the educational mission of the Church, it involves, moreover, a special dispensation of Divine Providence. Like her divine principle, the Church appears as a servant among men. The beauty of her inner life is veiled beneath an exterior covered with manifold imperfections. This serves as a constant admonition to the Church not to rely upon externals. Yet even these shadows on the image of the Church are evidences of her vitality. How superhuman must be an organization which outlasts all enemies in spite of many deficiencies! It is error, therefore, to infer from the undeniable, practical incongruity between the essence of the Church and her outward form that there cannot be an exclusive, concrete realization of the true Church in history.