By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,
While this is the voice of revelation, it is also in accordance with reason, which can see neither justice nor consistency in a salvation which regards only the immaterial and invisible part of man. Man would be at the same time destroyed by the theory of redemption which takes up the soul and leaves the body to perish. God could not so contradict Himself, writing His image in the creature made by the holy Trinity to rule over the visible earth, and then abandoning, in the richer work of grace, the body, which is the symbol of superiority in the visible creation. Again, our Lord took a visible body in all things like unto ours, sin only-excepted. Thus is He, the second Adam, as visible as the first; and hence, by necessary consequence, the bodies of the just are quickened with His life. Through the humanity He shows Himself to us ; by the humanity He touches us. "The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in Him."
The action of redemption upon the visible bodies of men requires logically external signs of grace; and such external signs require an outward organization and a tangible, corporate existence of the redeemed. We cannot conceive of such exterior signs of grace without divine authority; and divine authority exacts order as its first essential. Such signs of spiritual life are sacraments conveying under visible forms an inward power. They demand, and by the just requirements of logic, one visible body on earth as the sacrament and sign of unity with God, the invisible Worker. And, to demonstrate that our reasoning is just, as a matter of fact, where such a visible organization is denied, sacraments are soon rejected; and where sacraments are rejected the redemption of the body is contradicted. And soon, by the necessity of the argument, men scoff at a visible Redeemer and fall into blank materialism. There is nothing more unreasonable than materialism; but to it inevitably come the deniers of revelation; and this denial of truth revealed is the legitimate consequence of the rejection of any of its essential verities. Through the visible church God meets us in redemption. Here He touches us, and here all is in harmony. Deny the church, and the chain is broken which binds man to his Maker. In sin and blindness, he cannot stand alone. He falls not only from the pinnacle of grace, but even from the height of natural reason. "The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God."
