The truth which it thus presents, the Church believes to be the gift of God. This above all is the idea which it tries to safeguard by the outward signs of regular orders and sacraments.
Our belief about the communion service is that there Christ comes to us just as once the eternal Word, which was present with all His creation, none the less came in full manifestation under the limitations of time and space at a particular moment and in a particular country. So in the communion the Divine presence which fills the whole world ("Heaven and earth are full of His glory," as we say in the service itself) is offered to us, and draws near to us; and that not because of any virtue in us; it was while we were yet sinners that Christ came and died; it is while we are yet sinners that Christ offers Himself to us; and it is as guarding against any conception that we can determine how He shall come, or when and where, and that we can, as it were, manufacture His presence in our own way, that the Church maintains with the utmost emphasis the order that is necessary for that service.
It is to preserve the conception of spiritual life as a gift of God, and of the Church as the society which recognises and receives it as such a gift, in distinction from a mutual benefit society organised for the edification of its own members, that the Church insists upon the due order of its administration; and it is through concentration upon this idea of holiness, and all that it ought to mean in our personal lives, that we can make our greatest contribution towards bringing into existence again a real Catholic Church, a Church which shall genuinely include all the persons who believe in Christ in one order and fellowship. The first and indispensable condition of re-union is fuller dedication to the will of God in Christ. We shall be united to one another when we are all truly united to Him.
But, if that work is to be accomplished, we shall also need wisdom, in order rightly to counteract the effects alike of folly and of sin in the past history of the Church; and here every man must be willing to make what suggestions he can, merely submitting them for acceptance or rejection by the whole body of the Church; because unless people are prepared to speak of the problem as they see it, leaving the final judgment to be formed by the body of which they are members, there is no hope of our making any progress at all.
I will therefore, venture to suggest to you six principles, upon which, as my vision is at present, I think we might come near to agreement among ourselves; and if we should agree upon them, then we could offer these or whatever modifications of these the Church thinks fit, to those bodies which are at present in separation from us.
I.—First, what do we mean by the Church? Ideally and in its eternal reality it is the Body and Bride of Christ, the instrument of His will and the object of His love, worthy as both. But in the process of time and upon the stage of this world, what are we going to mean by it, and who are we going to account its members? When people begin to think of this question, they always start with various enthusiastic schemes. The members of the Church are the people who have faith, or the people who are conscious of the need of pardon, and the like; but all of this breaks down because you can never tell who these people are. We must have some perfectly plain outward sign if the Church is to be an operative agency in this world; and you will find, I think, that there is none which you can reach except that it is the fellowship of the baptized. Baptism is the Lord's own appointed way by which men should be received in the fellowship of His disciples. We must take that as our basis.
It is no business of ours to pronounce judgment upon the spiritual state of other persons. We shall thank God for every sign of the Christian virtues and graces shown in other persons who have not been brought to baptism; we may believe that they are members of the Church in heaven; but still, I would submit, we must say for all purposes of practical working, that the Church on earth is the fellowship of the baptized.
II.—That fellowship exists in fragments and sections. What is the peculiar mark of our fragment? This is authoritatively defined for us in the Lambeth Quadrilateral,[#] but our special character may be expressed briefly by saying that we are trustees for the Catholic order, who yet reject what seem to us the accretions which the Church of Rome upholds.
[#] (a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. as "containing all things necessary to Salvation," and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
(b) The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.