The Person and Office Of The Holy Ghost. 16.

By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,

This union between the Spirit and the members of the Church is dependent upon their union with the body which He permanently fills. From this body He never can depart, though individuals may fall away and lose His presence by apostasy. Let us quote here the language of St. Augustine: "What the soul is to the body of a man, that the Holy Ghost is to the body of Christ, which is the church. What the Holy Ghost does in the whole church, that the soul does in all the members of the body. In the body of a man it may happen that a member, the hand, the finger, or the foot, may be cut off. Does the soul follow the severed member? While it was in the body it was alive ; cut it off, its life is lost. So a man is a Christian and a Catholic while he is alive in the body ; cut off, he becomes a heretic."  The words of Scripture are abundant to establish this great fact of redemption. It is just as important to believe in the personal presence of the Holy Ghost in the visible church as it is to confess the incarnation and passion of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. "By our Lord we have access both in one Spirit to the Father. In whom we arc built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit."

The union of the Holy Ghost with the church is so perfect that the Scriptures and the Fathers speak as if it had a personality. "The head and the body are one man ; Christ and the church are one man, a perfect man: He the bridegroom, she the bride." Such words could have no meaning, if the union of the visible body with the Spirit were not substantial and indissoluble.

That body, therefore, in which the Holy Ghost dwells by a personal and abiding presence, is of necessity permanently and essentially sanctified. It loses its mere human character and becomes divine. It is an organisation of visible men, and so far of human nature; but by the union of the members with God dwelling in the body it partakes of the life of God. As the soul informs the body and gives it vitality, so the quickening Spirit vitalises the church and fills it with His divine energy.
This is a direct and logical consequence of the presence of the Holy Ghost. If He be in the church, then is she divine. If He be not in her, then all the words of revelation are an enigma and the Christianity of nineteen centuries a fable.

The body which the Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, animates is in truth the temple of the holy Trinity. It is " built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into a holy temple in the Lord."