UNION
133
UNION
they fcoing forth preached everywhere, the Lord ro-
operating with them, and confirming their words by
the signs that accompanied them" (xvi, 15-20). St.
Lulve, in Acts, i, 8, preserves words of Christ which
fit in with these two accounts: "You shall receive
the power of the Holy Ghost that will come down upon
you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and
in all Juda?a and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth"; whilst in his Gospel this Evangelist has
recorded how Jesus Christ in His post-Resurrection
discourses to His disciples enumerated as among the
primary doctrinal facts to be thus attested by the
Apostles and preached throughout the world, the
fulfilment in Jesus of the Old-Testament prophecies,
and the remission of sins through His name: "These
are the words which I have spoken to you whilst I
am still with you, for it is necessary that all things
which are written of Me in Moses and the Prophets
and the Psalms be fulfilled; and He said to them:
For thus it is written that the Christ must suffer and
rise again from the dead on the third day, and repent-
ance be preached in His name for the remission of
sins to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And
you shall be witnesses to these things. And I will
Send down upon you tliat (gift) which has been prom-
ised to you by My Father. Remain therefore in this
city until you be endued with power from on high"
(xxiv, 44-49).
Further, to go back to St. Matthew, this Evange- list tells us, in a most impressive passage intimately connected with the plan of his Gospel, that Christ made provision for unity of action among His .Apos- tles by appointing one of them to be the leader of his bretliren, and assigning to him a unique relation to the spiritual building He was raising. "And I say to thee that thou art Peter [i. e. the Rock], and upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will gi\-e thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (x^i, 18, 19). St. Luke (xxii, 31, 32) has words spoken in the supper-room which imply this previous appointment of St. Peter, by describing in other terms the same firm support which it would be his to communicate to the faith of the Church. "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail, and do thou when thou art converted" (or it may mean, "do thou in thy turn") "confirm thy brethren". St. John, whose Gospel follows a different course from the Synoptics, and seems to select for narration previously unre- corded deeds and words of Christ which cast a fuller fight on what the others had given, tells of Jesus Christ's final reiteration of the commi-ssion to St. Peter, rendered necessary perhaps to reassure him after his fall and deep repentance, and entrusting him anew with the supreme pastoral charge of the entire flock. "Simon, Son of John, lovest thou me more than these . . . feed My lambs ... be the shep- herd of mj' sheep" (xxi, 15-17). To St. John, too, we are indebted for our knowledge of a fact which accords well with the words, "Lo, I am with you always", reported by St. Matthew; for he testifies that on the occasion of the Last Supper Jesus Christ promised to send the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, and "will bear testimony of me" (xv, 26), and "will lead you into all truth" (xvi, 13); also that on the same occasion He prayed an effectual prayer for His disciples and "those who through their word should come to believe in him, that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art one in me, and I am one in Thee, so that they may be one in us, and thus the world may beheve that ihou hast sent me" (xvii, 20-2:}).
Were we arguing with the Rationalistic critics we
should have to meet their refusal to grant the authen-
ticity of much that is in these passages, but the ques-
tion of reunion is practical only for those who accept
fully and in all respects the authority of the canonical
Scriptures. If, then, we take these passages together
as utterances of the same Divine voice, reaching us
through these different channels, the conclusion is
irresistible that the Church was founded by Christ
on the principle of a revelation to which, as attested
by the word of God, unquest ioning assent is due from
all to whom it is addressed; on the principle of an
authority communicated by Christ to chosen repre-
sentatives whom He set as teachers of the world, and
to whom He requires that the world should render the
obedience of faith; and on the principle of a single
religious communion, under the rule of these teachers
and their duly appointed successors, admission to
which is through the gate of baptism and adherence
to which is imposed on aU under the most solemn
sanctions.
For (1) the duty assigned to the hearers is simply to believe what the Apostles impart to them as teach- ing deri^■cd from Jesus Christ, no liberty being allowed for disbelief on the ground that the Apostolic teaching does not commend itself to the judgment of the disciple; and this duty is declared to be so imperative that the fulfilment of it places a man in the way of salvation, but disregard of it in the way of Divine condemnation — the implication being that, as this teaching comes ultimately from Christ, that fact in itself should be held to give the disciple a better guar- antee of truth than any reasoning of his own could give. (2) The Apostles are sent by Christ in like manner as He was sent by His Father, and to the chief of them are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven with a far-reaching power to make binding laws, which must mean that He sends them forth to con- tinue the work He had begun, to make disciples as He had done, and to rule them in the spirit of the Good Shepherd as He had done; consequently, that He delegates to these Apostles such share of the author- ity given to Himself as He deemed necessary for the discharge of their world-wide commission. (3) The community thus formed out of the Apostolic teachers and their disciples was necessarily one by a twofold bond of union, inasmuch as the Icwliinc, being from God, was necessarily one, and the failli with which it had to be received was corresijomlinf^lyonc, inasnnich, too, as the visible society into whi<li all were baptized was essentially one, being under the rule of a body of pastors united under the presidency of a single vis- ible head. (4) The words, "I am with you always until the consummation of the world", prove, what indeed was presumable from the nature of the case, that Christ was then instituting a system not in- tended for the Apostolic generation only, but for all the generations to come, and hence that He was addressing His Apostles, not as eleven individual men only, but as men who, with their legitimate successors, formed a moral personality destined to last through the ages.
We may further gather from the texts above cited (5) that the revelation thus brought down from heaven and imparted to the world to be the means of its salvation was not confined to a few ethical maxims, lit up by the splendour of a surpassing example and of such .■simplicity that all men in all ages could without difficulty reconcile them on intrin- sic grounds with the dictates of tlieir person.al reason. On the contrary, it is expressed in terms of unlimited range — "teaching them all that I have commanded" — and is explicitly declared to contain first and fore- most in its doctrinal whole the mystery which sur- pa.s.ses all others in baffling human speculat ion, namely, the mystery of the Holy Trinity — "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" — in other words, for this is the meaning,
