[d] Grace and the Church and sacraments. — In apostolic thought the Church is a visible and Divine institution : the Body and Bride of Christ. It is the appropriate social environment for the sanctified soul, wherein at once the gifts of each are available for the profit of all and the spii'itual atmosphere conduces to the uplift and sanctity of all. It is specially the ' fulness of him that filleth all in all,' J i.e. the complement of His purpose, the means by which He accomplishes His loving sclieme for man's salvation. There are two strata of con- cepts concerning the Chmxh, one lower than the other, which have given some justification for the belief that the apostles describe the Church in two aspects, visible and invisible, realistic and ideal- istic. Rather they find in the Church as men see it something evident only to spiritual insight. To them the Church's life and spirit are but the realization and extension of the Spirit of Christ Himself, and the Church possesses, in the midst of its variety of spiritual influence upon its members, a mysterious unity, which is not only the sum-total of all present variations, but something always be- yond and far-reaching, inviting and calling and as- sisting the believing members upward and onward identically after the manner of Christ Himself with the soul living in Him. To magnify the Church is to magnify this Divine Spirit living and working in the Body of Christ.
The ordinances of the Church possess a particular character. They are not subordinate as mere means of influencing the soul : they are means of grace to the soul. They are of co-ordinate import- ance with the Incarnation, whose effects they continue, with the Atonement, which they com-
• A question into which we need not here enter, t Gal 51. J Eph IM.
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GEAVE, GEAVITY
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memorate, for they apply the graces of these. Tliis efficacy hangs on the Living Presence of Christ, whose grace they convey ; for the ett'ect of sacraments depends on the action of Christ Him- self. In them He communicates what He alone can bestow, for the use of which faith and spiritual affections are required, but which they cannot create.* Through His Spirit's operation they unite us with Him in the mystical union. The Church in this sense was purchased by Christ's blood t and is the object of justification. J Very early the rapidly growing Christian society seized upon this conception and began to relate the grace of Christ through His Spirit to the sacraments as feeders of the mystery of the inner life. The whole ancient Church, e.g., connects the gift of the Spirit with baptism. Yet there is no disposition to regard the rite as magical or mechanical : the spiritual effi- cacy of the ordinance is due to the Holy Spirit.§ Not the rite ex opere operato, not the minister, but the Spirit dispenses grace ; the visible elements and the ministerial action deiive their validity from the Spirit alone. Soon pagan and superstitious elements were to enter in, to alter this free spiritual idea of sacramental gi-ace into 'another grace' altogether — a lapse from personal to sub-personal categories, in perfect consonance with the new and attractive idea of the Church in its visibility and authority as the exclusive custodian of grace. Externally as that idea was formulated, and false as its rapid development grew to be to the apostolic mind, its opponents too often forget that to the apostolic mind there is no idea so fundamental as the reality of a great spiritual society living by its own truth and liie, having its own laws, and these exclusively spiritual. For the life of grace consists not simply in the new life of the soul. It is the new order of the world, a new permanent order of life, a real supernatural constitution unfolding itself in the world, in absolute rupture with the present world, deeper and more comprehensive than the life of believers, having objective substan- tiality in the Life of God as the Life of Christ itself, whose embodiment on earth it is — an idea whose present and practical realization the modern social necessities imperatively demand.
LiTERATTTRE. — Besides the books referred to in the body of the art., the following will be found useful : the artt. ' Grace ' in JE, CE, and ' Gnade ' in PRE-i ; the Commentaries on Romans, particularly that of Sanday-Headlam in ICC, 1902 ; C. Pie- pinbring:, J4stis et les Apotns, Paris, 1911 : A. E. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Go.'<pcl. London, 1911 ; J. R. Cohu, St. Paulinthe Light of Modem Research, do. 1911 ; G. Steven, The Psychology of the Christian Soul, do. 1911 ; W. A. Cor- naby. Prayer and the Hitman Problem, do. 1912 ; a series of artt. bv W. M. Ramsay, A. E. Garvie, and H. A. A. Kennedy in the Expositor, 8th ser. iii. [1912], iv. [1912], v. [1913] ; the great work of H. J. Holtzmann, Die Neutest. Theologie-, Tubingen, 1911, and an older work of great merit — J. W. Nevin, The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846. A. S. MaRTIN.
GRAFTING — The Greek word used {iyKem-pl^co) has two distinct meanings : (1 ) ' goad ' or ' spur on ' (cf. Ac 26^'*, ' It is hard for thee to kick against the goad [Kivrpov]),' and (2) 'inoculate' or 'graft.' The English word ' graff' is derived from the Gr. ypd(p- eiv, ' to write,' and means a slip of a cultivated tree inserted into a wild one, so called because of its resemblance to a pencil. In the NT the word occurs only in Ro ll"-24 . g^, Paul here follows the Prophets (cf. Jer IV^) in likening Israel to an olive tree (cf. art. Olive). Its roots are the Patriarchs, the original branches are the Jews, and the branches of the wild olive which have been grafted