^ There is a particular conception of the nature of the Church to which I desire to give prominence and distinctness, believing that in this conception is to be found the key which will reduce into order the various notions which the word " Church " sets floating in our minds. In our Collect for All Saints' Day the term " mystical " is associated with the Church, or we should say that the Collect is describing the Church when it speaks of knitting " together Thine elect in one communion and fellowship.
lo THE CHURCH
in the mystical body of Thy Son Christ our Lord." To many, perhaps, the word " mystical " is nearly the same as mysterious : others would explain it as meaning spiritual. I would suggest that the nearest modern equivalent to it in this place would be " ideal." The mystical body of Christ is a body which exists in idea. The Church is primarily an idea of the living God — an idea, not as we should speak of your idea or mine or any other man's, but, what is a very different thing, an idea of God, and of a God who lives and works, and in the creative mind a foreordained purpose which God is working out by degrees in the world of His creatures.^
2. Is there any better way out of our difficulties than to lay hold of that conception of the Church as an ideal body which St. Paul suggests to us ? In thinking thus of the Church we start from God and Christ, and not from visible organizations. We find the substance and reality of the Church, not in the forms with which it clothes itself in the development of the ages, but in the purposes of God which He is revealing to us in history. We may gain some help by thinking of the design of a picture or a group of sculpture which exists in the artist's mind. The work has reached a certain stage, but we cannot say that this, as it stands, is the picture or the sculpture. We have received per- haps some notion of what is in the artist's mind, but we do not think of the incomplete material representation as the work of art, as the artist's creation. The Apostles have given us the con- ception of a body of Christ, which they themselves derive, not so much from verbal instruction as from the ardent contemplation of Christ Himself. They saw that Christ raised and exalted was a Head who must have a body ; they looked round on the societies which they had been impelled to form, and this helped them to conceive what a perfect body of Christ might be. They beheld an immeasurable number of human beings all attached by spiritual apprehension to Christ, fulfilling the most various functions, in the happiest harmony with each other, and so leading to the growth and perfection of the whole body ; they believed in this design of God as working creatively in the formation of Christian societies, in a Divine power, the same as that which brought in the exaltation of Christ, continually urging design into outward, living fulfilment. If ever the question arose, What
^ J. LI. Diiviea.
EPHESIANS I. 22, 23 II
is fundamentally and distinctively the Church ? the inquirer would be referred to the Divine pattern, that heavenly conception of Christ with associated men into which actual Christian life, with its manifold imperfections, was by Divine energy being built up. The Church of God was both visible and invisible, but it was the invisible form that was satisfactory, permanent, unifying, complete.
^ If in our own time, seeking for the true Church, we can look through visible societies and members to the real pattern of God, we should not allow our faith to be too much disturbed by the scene which Christendom presents to our view. It is in many respects a shocking scene, with its divisions and corruptions, its faithlessness and its strife, contradicting, one might be tempted to say, the elementary conception of a Catholic Church. But the Divine energy in its marvellous condescension is content to work with the materials of human weakness and perversity, and our joy must be to recognize an institution of apostolic authority, a living expression, revealing the Divine idea of humanity and tending towards visible fulfilment of it.^
^ This is the difficulty of all the highest service of life, namely, that the spiritual is invisible, and yet omnipotent ; public attention is fixed upon the human agent, and professions of spiritual in- spiration and impulse are treated with distrust, if not with con- tempt, by the most of mankind. It is the invisible Christ who is with the Church. Were He present manifestly, it is supposed that greater results would accrue from Christian service ; but the supposition must be mistaken, inasmuch as He to whom such service is infinitely dearer than it ever can be to ourselves has determined the manner of Christian evangelization. What, then, is the great duty and privilege of the Church ? It is to realize the presence and influence of the Invisible. The Church ia actually to see the Unseen.^
3. Except as an ideal, except as a vision, the perfect outward symmetry and beauty have never yet been seen, because the pro- fessing Church and the true Church have never yet been co- extensive. The magnificent conception of the perfect spiritual temple in all its majestic proportions has never been realized. You can see the great outline, you can admire the grand simplicity and the marvellous harmony of the design, as you may in some great Cathedral on whose glorious beauty Time has laid his