than the bodily; insomuch that, if he is not spiritual in and through the body, he cannot be spiritual at all. Is he then bodily or spiritual? He is both; and yet not separately, nor yet equally both. If his bodily being seems to be the primary truth, yet, on experience, the truth of his spiritual being is so absorbing, so inclusive, that his bodily being is but vehicle, is but utterance, of the spiritual; and the ultimate reality even of his bodily being is only what it is spiritually. He is body indeed, and is spirit. Yet this is not a permanent dualism, not a rivalry of two ultimate truths, balanced over against one another, while remaining in themselves unrelated. More exactly, he is Spirit-in, and through, Body.

Just so it is with the Church. The visible Body is the spiritual Church-is so really, even while it most imperfectly is; as the living man (in himself too truly a sinner), while he is, at the best, only most inchoately and imperfectly, yet to the eye of the Almighty Truth, which sees the blossom in the bud, the fruit in the seed, the end in the beginning, is truly, because he is truly becoming, a saint. In external truth, the most primary, the most obvious to the eye, the Church is a human society, with experience chequered like the experience of human societies; in its inner reality, it is the presence and the working, here and now, of the leaven of the Spirit; it does not represent-but it is-the Kingdom of God upon earth. The real meaning of all the bodily organism and working of the Church is the spiritual meaning. Whatever is not expression of Spirit is failure. And conversely, here as everywhere, the working of the Spirit must be looked for in and through organisms which are bodily. In the world of our

1 The expression of Clement of Alexandria is striking: OUTW TO TOTEÛσαι μόνον καὶ ἀναγεννηθῆναι τελείωσίς ἐστιν ἐν ζωῇ· οὐ γάρ ποτε ἀσθενεῖ ὁ Θεός. Ως γὰρ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ἔργον ἐστί, καὶ τοῦτο κόσμος ὀνομάζεται· οὕτως καὶ τὸ βούλημα αὐτοῦ ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶ σωτηρία, καὶ τοῦτο Ἐκκλησία κέκληται. Οἶδεν οὖν οὓς κέκληκεν, οὓς σέσωκεν' κέκληκεν δὲ ἅμα καὶ σέσωκεν, Paedag. i. p. 114. Cp. the Augustinian phrases, 'Tales nos amat Deus, quales futuri sumus, non quales sumus . . . Per [fidem] perveniemus ad speciem, ut talės amet,quales amat ut simus, non quales odit quia sumus,' de Trin. i. 21.

experience at least, body, rightly understood, means spirit: neither is there any working of the spirit which is not through body. The visible body then, of the Church, is real, and its outward process and history, as bodythe history (so to speak) of its chemical analysis, or the history of its material development-are real: yet the truth of these is as untrue, in comparison with the overmastering truth of its spiritual reality, which alone gives, even to these, their real significance: and even the very truth of these becomes a downright untruth, in so far as it ever is used, in greater measure or less, to contradict, or impair, or disguise the truth of its essential being as Spirit. So worse than idle is it so positively misleading—to try to analyze the material history (so to speak) of the body of the Church, as if it were an explanation of what the Church is. It would be as profitable for the chemist or the anatomist, as such, to pronounce upon the ultimate meaning of the being of man.

It will be observed that what has now been insisted upon is the full, and (in a sense) the balanced statement of a truth which has two aspects. It is fatal to the understanding of the being of man either to deny that he is bodily, or to deny that he is spiritual; either to deny that the meaning of the bodily is its spiritual meaning, or to deny that the method of the spirit is through body. I speak of this as in a sense a balanced statement, because the balance is not precisely equal. If in a sense it is true that the body and the spirit are, as predicated of man, both equally true; it is, as already explained, a truth deeper and truer to deny that the truths are ultimately equal. They are not balanced: the one gradually disappears in the other. Yet, for present purposes at least, they stand out against one another as mutually indispensable aspects of one complex truth. For any real understanding of the Church, or its ministries and sacraments, it will be found, in like manner, indispensable to realize to the full the two aspects of this truth and their mutual relation.

What has been said enables us to insist, with the utmost possible emphasis, upon the essential character of the Church as Spirit. If the spiritual work of the Church has instruments, organs, ordinances; if these have an existence which may be described as mechanical and material, yet their entire reality of meaning and character is spiritual. 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are Spirit, and are Life'. The whole reality is Spirit. If any of those who are inclined to protest against external ordinances lay all their stress upon this principle, we desire on our part to lay it down with an emphasis so sweeping that they may find it impossible to say it more sweepingly than we. If they demur to the idea that there can be any absolute value or reality in formal practices—including in this phrase the whole sacramental or ministerial system-we too echo every such word to the very uttermost, we sympathize to the full; nay, we lay down this principle for ourselves, and build upon it as an indispensable foundation of truth. There is no true meaning or reality whatever but Spirit. Only just as, in man's life, the Spirit, which alone is the essential meaning and reality of human life, must have expression through bodily organs and actions; and the over-mastering truth of Spirit does not diminish the truth, in its subordinate place and degree, of body: so in the life of the Church, the very reality of the Spirit cannot but express itself through definite methods and processes; which orderly forms and methods, so far from having in themselves any absolute reality or value, only exist for this, in order that they may beonly are real after all just so far as they really are not formal realities, arithmetical, ponderable, measurable, but reflexions, expressions, activities of Living Spirit. Spirit is the meaning of the Body; the Body is the utterance of the Spirit. The Body is not therefore an unfortunate condescension, an accidental and regrettable necessity. 1 John vi. 63.

1

The

However gross it may be apart from its animating meaning ; yet as vehicle of Spirit, which is its true function, it rises to the full dignity of that which it expresses; nay, it no longer merely expresses, in its true essence already it may be said to be Spirit. It is an error, somewhat Manichaean in character, to treat Body, the Body of Spirit, as mere condescension. The Body of Christ, whether Personal or Mystical, is what Christ is, in respect of dignity. A body didst thou prepare for Me1' is a word which has true significance in reference to the Body of the Church.

It is from this point of view that we cannot but criticize the opening position of Bishop Lightfoot's famous essay upon the 'Christian Ministry.' He insists, truly in the main, upon the Church's essential existence as spiritual. But he uses this truth to deny the reality of her proper existence as bodily; and then, being forced to deal with her existence as bodily, he treats it, not (in analogy with every experience of this world, an experience consummated and consecrated in the Incarnation for ever), as the living, proper method and utterance of Spirit, but as a lower, politic, condescending, accidental necessity: not as something to be identified with, interpreted by, more and more absorbed into, but rather as to be contrasted with, and (if it were possible) disowned by, its own spiritual meaning. He contrasts the ideal and the actual of the Church: not, as in any age he well might do, on the ground that in the Church as it is, the outward order expresses its own animating Spirit so imperfectly, but because its Spirit is expressed in any outward order at all. It is

1 Hebrews x. 5.

2 Bishop Lightfoot's essay opens thus: "The kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. It displays this character, not only in the acceptance of all comers who seek admission, irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also in the instruction and treatment of those who are already its members. It has no sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because every

necessary, with all respect, to insist that this position. cannot be either philosophically or theologically maintained. Accepting for the moment the imagery which the word 'ideal' suggests (though I have tried already to show

time and every place alike are holy. Above all it has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone God is reconciled and man forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion with the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength.

'It is most important that we should keep this ideal definitely in view, and I have therefore stated it as broadly as possible. Yet the broad statement, if allowed to stand alone, would suggest a false impression, or at least would convey only a half truth. It must be evident that no society of men could hold together without officers, without rules, without institutions of any kind; and the Church of Christ is not exempt from this universal law. The conception in short is strictly an ideal, which we must ever hold before our eyes, which should inspire and interpret ecclesiastical polity, but which nevertheless cannot supersede the necessary wants of human society, and, if crudely and hastily applied, will lead only to signal failure. As appointed days and set places are indispensable to her efficiency, so also the Church could not fulfil the purposes for which she exists without rulers and teachers, without a ministry of reconciliation, in short, without an order of men who may in some sense be designated a priesthood.'

And two pages later he writes: This then is the Christian ideal; a holy season extending the whole year round-a temple confined only by the limits of the habitable world-a priesthood coextensive with the human race.

'Strict loyalty to this conception was not held incompatible with practical measures of organization. As the Church grew in numbers, as new and heterogeneous elements were added, as the early fervour of devotion cooled and strange forms of disorder sprang up, it became necessary to provide for the emergency by fixed rules, and definite officers. The community of goods, by which the infant Church had attempted to give effect to the idea of an universal brotherhood, must very soon have been abandoned under the pressure of circumstances. The celebration of the first day in the week at once, the institution of annual festivals afterwards, were seen to be necessary to stimulate and direct the devotion of the believers. The appointment of definite places of meeting in the earliest days, the erection of special buildings for worship at a later date, were found indispensable to the working of the Church. But the Apostles never lost sight of the idea in their teaching. They proclaimed loudly that "God dwelleth not in temples made by hands." They indignantly denounced those who "observed days and months, and seasons and years." This language is not satisfied by supposing that they condemned only the temple worship in the one case, that they reprobated only Jewish sabbaths and new moons in the other. It was against the false principle that they waged war; the principle which