By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,
IV.
The Holy Spirit in the church, as He is the principle of her life, so is He the cause of her unity.The church of Christ, as it appears to us in the Scriptures and through the testimony of historical Christianity, cannot be conceived of without the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. He alone makes her all that she is, and is therefore the principle of her being. Without Him she would be like any other organization of mere men, liable to constant changes and having no promise of perpetuity. She is, indeed, an organization of men, but not of mere men. Her members are bound to each other and to God by the presence and power of the almighty Spirit. So no essential change can pass over her; no attack of man can prevail against her; for, by the life of God within her, she is emancipated from the law of decay. She could no more perish than God could perish, for her life is bound up with His. For this reason, when we confess the Holy Ghost in our baptismal creed, we also confess the holy Catholic Church. We know nothing of the Holy Ghost except through the church, and without the living presence of the Spirit there is no church. The building erected by Jesus Christ for 4 'an habitation of God through the Spirit" can be no merely human temple to pass away with the wrecks of time.
But if the Spirit of God abides in the church, then is she necessarily one, and with the most rigid unity. He could not abide in two or many churches arrayed against each other. This were to array God against Himself, and make Him the author of confusion and error.
Moreover, where God is, there must be unity, since disunion is disorder directly opposed to his attributes. Unity is life, and disunion is death. Where, then, the Spirit of life binds together the different members of an organization established by divine hands, there is of necessity the unity which flows from the fountain of all oneness. So the sacrificial prayer of the Mediator asks for His members, "that they may all be one, as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee, that they may also be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me."St. John xvii. 21. This unity is more than visible. It is indeed visible, else the world could never know that the Father had sent the Son to produce it. The visible unity is the proof given to the nations of the presence of the Spirit. But that which is visible, and so a testimony to the world, is only the outward sign of a still more wonderful unity of faith and hope and love. This internal oneness is the work of the Holy G-host, who alone maketh men to be of one mind and to confess everywhere the same faith. This unity, so impossible to all mere human societies, is the manifest proof of the divine power. Man strives to counterfeit it in vain. Yet God cannot be in man without subordinating his will and illuminating his intellect. The visible unity is the fruit of the attraction of the Holy Ghost drawing to one, and binding together in one, elements discordant. The moral unity is the work of that same Spirit revealing Himself to many eyes as one, and in many hearts showing forth the one truth as it is in Jesus. Thus is there one Lord and one faith, as there is one Spirit and one body, even as we are called in one hope to a union with the one God and Father of all, who is in all, and through all, and above us all.
Here again the denial of unity in the visible church leads to the rejection of the one Spirit as He has been revealed to men. And the denial of the Holy Ghost is the most emphatic rejection of Christ our Lord, who can only be known through the Paraclete, whom He sends.
