name, there am I in the midst of them' (Matt. xviii. 20), He spoke clearly and unmistakably of His invisible Church on earth. And St. Ignatius Martyr expressed the same idea when he wrote: "Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church " (Ubi Christus est, ibi Catholica est Ecclesia) (Epistula ad Smyrneos, cap. viii.). On which Dr. Gerardus Rauschen, a Roman Catholic scholar, remarks that "the words, Catholica Ecclesia, which occur here for the first time in Christian literature, mean the universal Church, of which Christ is the Head."1

Indeed from the first there was obviously a distinction between true and untrue Christians, between the spiritual and the carnal, between the vessels to honour and the vessels to dishonour. "It is better," says St. Ignatius Martyr, "for a man to be silent and be a Christian, than to talk and not be one. The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. "The tree is known by its fruit: so those that profess themselves to be Christians are to be recognised by their conduct. For

"1

1 Gerardus Rauschen, Florilegium Patristicum. Bonnæ, 1904. 1 St. Ignatius' Epistle to the Ephesians, chap. xv.

there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in

1

the power of faith to the end." "It is fitting, then, not only to be called Christians, but to be so in reality. For it is not the being called so that renders a man blessed." 2

The Didache teaches no other doctrine. "All true Christians are one, though scattered over the world, and God, the Head of the Church, will gather them all from the four winds into His kingdom.' The theology of the Didache is clear. The Church is manifold, and will pass away, with its various organisations; the kingdom of God is one and will last for ever, here as a kingdom of grace, there as a kingdom of glory. When, therefore, Roman Catholic and High Church Anglican theologians maintain that "the idea of an invisible Church to express the body of true believers, who alone are the Church, to whatever community they belong, is an idea entirely at variance with Scripture and all pre-Reformation teaching," they assert a thing which they cannot prove. If the early

1 St. Ignatius' Epistle to the Ephesians, chap. xiv.

" Id., Epistle to the Magnesians, chap. iv.

Didache, ix. 4; x. 5.

♦ Cf. Lux Mundi, "The Church," by Rev. W. Lock, p. 275.

Christian literature distinguishes between true and untrue Christians, between the Church and the kingdom, it distinguishes between a visible and an invisible Church. True, the words "visible and invisible Church" do not occur; but it matters little. We do not look for the words where we have the idea. The visible Church was to the first Christians, as it is for us, "the Church" simply: they called the invisible Church, "kingdom." To the latter belong the Christians who live in perfect righteousness according to the Gospel, the true children of God, and all those who persevere to the end. All these form the kingdom of God upon earth.

This difference between the Church and the kingdom, i.e. between the visible and invisible Church, is likewise very apparent in those parables of our Lord which teach about the kingdom, and in such passages as "to them [to the poor in spirit, to the children] belongs the kingdom of heaven," and to "enter the kingdom," in Matt. V. 3, xviii. 3, 4; Mark x. 14; John iii. 5; or "the kingdom. of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. xiv. 17). Finally, it is very significant

ἐκκλησία

that Christ uses ekkλnoíα only twice (in Matthew and nowhere else), but Baσideía twenty-three times in Matthew alone.

I answer, in the second place, the Church of Rome not only denies the great truth of the invisibility of the Church, but she also gives a wrong definition of the visible Church. According to her, "the true Church of Christ is the society of the faithful, believing the doctrine of Christ, sharing in His sacraments, and in communion with the Pope of Rome." Now, this view of the Church of Christ is completely at variance with Holy Writ. Even when applied to the visible Church this definition is too limited and narrow; it excludes too many earnest and real Christians from the Church of Christ, and at most it may be said only of the local Church of Rome. Stern, real facts compel us to admit that "the visible Church of Christ consists of the sum-total of all Churches and believers that profess the essential doctrines of Christ and employ the most important, if not all, of the means of grace which He left for our eternal salvation."

The Christian Churches are thereby placed

on a certain graduated scale of perfection and of intrinsic excellence. Those that drink more abundantly at the living fountain of the doctrine of Christ, and adhere more closely to His divine Gospel, stand at the top of the scale; others somewhat lower; others, finally, which have adulterated the divine message of Christ, so long as they do not reform themselves, are at the bottom of it.

As long, however, as the different Churches believe and practise what is essential to salvation both with regard to doctrine and to Christian life, they, although not strictly in communion with one another, are branches of the same tree, off-shoots of the same mother-root, vines of the same vineyard, brooklets from the same source, rays of the same sun-Christ the Lord.

A Roman divine will object at this point: "Your definition of the true Church of Christ destroys the unity of the Church. The Church, according to you, is nothing more than a congeries of Churches, often at war with one another on capital points of Christian doctrine, and differing from one another in manner of worship, in charity,