His members is the law of love, of love to God and love to man, that law as He realized it in His personal history on earth.1

The positive holiness of the Church is on the one hand the dynamic of her life; all the instincts, all the spiritual and ethical tendencies of the new creation in Christ, are toward Him and for Him, the spontaneous sympathies of her heart being with His kingdom and with its final per fection. On the other hand the Church by the force of will seeks consciously to determine her activity as a whole and regulates the moral conduct of her members according to the divine will as this is exemplified by her Head. Her aim is not to please herself, but to do the will of the Father on earth as His will is done in heaven. Rooted in the perfected life of Christ glorified, the Church is predestined to realize the profound impulses of her life toward holiness in her organization, in her creed, in her prayers, and in her moral perfection. To a degree she has been fulfilling and is now fulfilling her divine vocation by her persevering work in the service of Christian truth and human right

eousness.

The historical fact that for nineteen centuries the Church has in her actual condition but partially realized the pure and holy dynamic of her new life does not contradict the truth that she is a holy communion. "Sanctification means progressive appropriation by man of the life of the Son of God; the formation in him, by successive stages, of the image of Christ." The law of sin is not now utterly abolished; emancipation from the evils of the fall is not now complete. Yet the principle of Christian holiness is active in her history, and it has borne rich and 1John xv. 12. I John iv. 21. 2 Lux Mundi, p. 424.

2

abundant fruit. The Church is the only communion that has asserted the law of positive Christian holiness; and by positive Christian holiness we may mean nothing less than the spotless purity, the unique righteousness and perfect devotion to God which is exemplified by the personal history of the Son of Man. Such a righteous life had never been seen, nor even conceived by human genius.' No religious teacher of any pagan nation, no Jewish prophet, can bear comparison with Him. Yet it is He who is for the Church the ideal of her holiness. He is the pattern ever confronting her faith. It is He whom she is ever striving to follow. This steadfast faith in Him who is the reality of a perfectly holy ideal, and His constant communion in the Spirit with His people, impart to the Church an essential quality of divine sanctity which distinguishes no other communion. That her ministry and her membership are not now like Himself completely holy only signifies that the mediatorial work of Christ in the history of His mystical body is itself not yet final.

4. Like revelation and redemption, like the love of righteousness and the hatred of sin, so positive holiness and negative holiness involve each other. There is no deliverance from the dominion of sin unless the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the active principle of believers; and in whatever degree this new law becomes an active principle the perverting influence of sin on Christian character disappears. Each form of holiness conditions the other; but the two things are not coördiThe primary condition is the new life. The communion of faith with Christ conditions the possibility

nate.

'Not by Socrates in Thaetetus of Plato, 176, Jowett, III., p. 378, though for a pagan his conception of God and righteousness is extraordinary.

of actual salvation. Only in the degree that the Church in doctrine and worship, in government and discipline and in works of charity, is actuated by love and truly fulfils the will of God, is she in reality emancipated from the dominion and purified from the taint of sin.

3. CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH.

§ 293.

The Church is catholic. In distinction from Judaism and from ethnic religions Christianity is designed and fitted for all races and for all nations.

(

1. The title catholic,' from the Greek, Kabode, is the equivalent of the Latin derivative universal, and agreeably to the force of its component parts, karà and öños, it means that the Church is through or diffused among all nations and tribes. Christians of the first centuries used the title to mark an essential characteristic which distinguishes the Church from the Abrahamic covenant, from the Mosaic economy and from Judaism, different stages of the preChristian religion confined only to one nation. The title also distinguished the early Church from heretical sects developed from schismatic schools and limited to schismatic communities, each of which was in principle repellent toward others. The Church, in distinction from Judaism, embraced Gentiles and Jews, Greeks and barbarians, bondmen and freemen. In contradistinction from heretical sects, Christians affirmed the same Creed in all places and among all peoples.

In our age the title 'catholic,' as naming an essential quality of the Christian Church, has the same meaning, but by implication it asserts a wider contrast.

Now as

then the Church is catholic in contrast with Judaism, which still characterizes a single nationality; catholic also in contrast with communities of sects which deny one or more of the fundamentals of Christianity and are confined to one period of time or to one or more countries, such as the Manicheans of the fourth and fifth centuries, or the Socinianism of the Reformation age, or the Oneida communism or the Mormonism of our own century.

The Church is catholic in a still broader sense. As regards her claim to recognition and obedience she asserts a contrast with all world religions. The religion of Egypt suited the Egyptians, and the religion of Zarathrustra the ancient Persians; so in our day the Brahmanism of India has a measure of adaptation to the temperament, habits of life and thought of the Hindoo, and the fetichism of Africa answers to the superstitions and degradation of savage negro tribes; but neither the one nor the other can retain its authority within its own territory when the light of Christian truth illumines its devotees, much less could either now take root and become the molding force in the Christian nations of Europe or America. Christianity on the contrary is in sympathy with the deepest needs and the best aspirations of all races and nations, of the Hindoo and the African no less than of the European and the American.

Countries are separated by mountains, rivers and oceans; races by original types of humanity; nations by heredity, by language, manners and customs. Each race is by the perverseness of human nature repellent in a degree to other races, each nation to other nations, notwithstanding the fact that God "made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Regardless of

these separations, divisions, antagonisms, the Church approaches each and all in the one Holy Spirit, with the same creed, the same grace, the same sacraments, the same prayer, the same law, proclaiming the forgiveness of sin and eternal life to men, women and children, and proving by the experience of all classes of people that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. Says Pearson:

"I conclude that this catholicism of the Church, consisteth generally in universality, as embracing all sorts of persons, as to be disseminated through all nations, as comprehending all ages, as containing all necessary and saving truths, as obliging all conditions of men to all kinds of obedience, as curing all diseases, and planting all graces in the souls

2. The word catholic, KatoKoç, does not occur in the text of the New Testament; but this essential property, as expressed by the word, intones all the books of the New Testament. Catholicity comes prominently to view in the apostolic commission. Says our Lord: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The unlimited compass of the apostolic commission is likewise declared by our Lord in His exposition of the parable of the tares, where He teaches that "the field is the world." It is implied also by the words of "the voices" when the seventh angel of the Apocalypse sounded. Then there followed great voices in heaven, and they said: "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and

1 Pearson on the Creed, p. 522.

2 Matt. xiii. 38.

Schaff.

"The gospel is good seed to be scattered everywhere."