were celebrated in very early times; the domes and much of the superstructure were built by Amurath, or as he is really called here, Murad I., but the foundations and basement story, as well as the bath itself, are old Greek work of wonderful solidity. Passing downwards below the level of the wooden rooms for patients, which cling to the east front of the building, and are further supported on high wooden piles (which, by the way, give the whole thing a most picturesque effect from a distance), we came upon a handsome white marble gateway, ornamented with small columns and other signs of former care and adornment about it. This led us into a large vaulted chamber filled with steam rising from a seething rivulet which rushes tumultuously through a narrow channel in the ground, whence, tumbling down the hill-side, it is lost in a wilderness of trees and shrubs. The ground of this open vault is formed of solid layers of mineral deposit, which has raised it considerably above the original level, and a conical mass of the same substance, issuing from the inner wall of the building, looks like a petrified cataract; the round aperture is completely blocked up by it, and the water now finds its escape from within a second vaulted chamber. We were drawn there by the roaring sound of the torrent, but the heat and thick steam made it impossible to take more than a rapid survey. The waters of Tchekirghé have at times quite an inky tinge. My donkey had a particular objection to crossing it as it bubbled down the road, however small or insignificant the rill might be. On our way back towards the entrance of the village, Aunt Sarah stopped to take from the grey wall of the bath some tufts of exquisite maiden-hair fern, which grows there in great profusion. A lover of ferneries may find great treasures here; Aunt Sarah's collection, as well as her book of wild flowers, is rapidly becoming valuable: some of the specimens are extremely rare. Our return from Tchekirghé was marked by no greater incident than that a group of pretty little girls at play in the open ground before the mosque of Murad II., saluted our passage with stones. One sweet little dot, grasping a muddy old shoe nearly as long as herself, was calmly preparing to wipe it down F's dress, when I prevented her, raising my parasol in pretended anger; the little creature shrank back, but the moment I was at a safe distance, a sharp stone flew past me with great force, considering the tiny hand from which it came; it cut my own hand slightly. Such a blow on the face might have been unpleasant. But these incidents are matters of course at Broussa, where all the little children are pretty, and all throw stones at strangers, particularly at Franks, most especially at ladies; the youthful population being, I am sorry to say, as notoriously rude and ill-mannered, as their elders are civil, good-humoured, and obliging. LAYING A FOUNDATION STONE. OCTOBER 5тн, 1867. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." "The Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee." AFTER harvest dews and harvest moonshine, Work in faith, good neighbour beside neighbour, Ay, though in the mystery of mysteries THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. VIII. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind."-Matt. xiii. 47. THE Parable from which these words are taken, forms the seventh and last link of that golden chain of Divine doctrine which is handed down to us in this section of the first Gospel. Bearing many marks of connection with the Parable of the Tares of the Field, it has yet its own point or points of difference. It is known in the brief summary which stands at the head of the Chapter in our Authorized Version, as the Parable of the Draw Net cast into the Sea. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind." The net used as the similitude in this parable is not the kind of net which the two brethren, afterwards to be St. Peter and St. Andrew, were casting into the sea at the moment of their call to become fishers of men. That was a casting, as this is a hauling or drag net. I know not that much hangs upon the difference. But this is at least remarkable, that the draw-net was of immense length, reaching sometimes, we are told, in its use on one of the coasts of England now, as much as half a mile in extent; "leaded below, so as to sweep the bottom of the sea, and supported with corks above; first carried out so as to enclose a large space of sea, and then its ends brought together, till at last it is drawn up upon the beach with all that it contains." * In the prophet Habakkuk it is used as the figure of a vast and farreaching conquest. The Chaldeans are described as catching the nations in their net, and gathering them in their drag," till, in the elation of unbounded success, they actually "sacrifice to the net, and burn incense to the drag," which has brought them in so marvellous a draught. The force of the comparison lies largely in the last words. The drag-net is promiscuous in its capture. It cannot discriminate between costly and worthless, between clean and unclean, even between living and dead, in its all-comprehending embrace: it takes what comes: when its ends are drawn together, and the vast circumference is gathered in, and the ample folds, ever more and more concentrated, are at last laid in one heap upon the shore, it will be found to have collected both bad and good, and a later process will be necessary to sort and discriminate the two. Not until the net is full, and drawn to shore, will that other work begin-the good gathered into vessels, and the bad cast away. While the net is out in the wide waters, it gathers indiscriminately of every kind. Even thus is it with the kingdom of heaven until the end of this world. Then at last the Angels shall come forth, at the word of the Lord of the Church, to sever the wicked from among the just; casting them into a furnace of fire, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. We have then in this Parable a clear intimation that our Lord Jesus Christ foresaw and acquiesced in a long continuance of that mingled condition of His Church which has been its experience thus far in every age. It was His purpose to establish upon earth a community not all at once perfect in its con- | stituent parts, but waiting for its perfection until a future consummation of all things, the theme of all the Prophets which have been since the world was. This mingled body, the result of the extension of the vast Gospel-net in all the waters, is that "Holy Catholic Church" of which we are to speak now. It is a "Church;" that is, a congregation, or assembly, gathered together as by the proclamation of a herald, out of a yet larger body-the universal To such a net as this the kingdom of heaven is world-for certain definite purposes, to be unfolded compared in the text. That kingdom which Christ came upon earth to announce by His doctrine and to found by His death-that kingdom which was established on the great day of Pentecost, when He who had ascended up on high poured out upon His disciples the supernatural gifts and Divine graces of the Holy Spirit— that kingdom which thenceforward until now has has been in process of administration by our Lord Himself in heaven, so that all its subjects have heaven already for their capital, even as it is written by one of the Apostles, "Our conversation (citizenship) is already in the heavens," that kingdom, says its Sovereign Himself, may be compared, in its present working, to a vast hauling net cast into the sea, and gathering of every kind. * Archbishop Trench. and developed when that first step of obedience is taken. The Church, however vast its numbers, is all, in God's sight, in Christ's regard, one assembly, one congregation. This Church is called "Holy," inasmuch as it is brought into a certain recognised relation to God Himself; consecrated, that is, separated by God's command from all profane and common uses, and brought near to Himself in the manner of a definite consecration. It is Holy, because in it as a community, though not actually in each separate member of that community, the Holy Spirit Himself dwells and works. It is Holy, because it contains all those in whom He does personally operate; because therefore "a holy seed" is in the midst thereof, communicating a sort of derived and imparted sanctity to the body itself to which they belong. And this Holy Church is also "Catholic," that is, Universal; inasmuch as it has no one element of a restricted or exclusive character: its members are living men "of every kindred and tongue and nation and people," dispersed throughout (though not yet co-extensive with) the whole world: its commission is to all men, and by men of every clime and every race is it welcomed, listened to, and entered. The thought of the existence of such a community, and of our membership of it, is full of instruction and full of admonition. 1. The bare remembrance of the fact that, beside and along with the various combinations and associations of men on other grounds and for other purposes, there is a society, there is an organization, there is a kingdom, altogether "not of this world," has in it a grave and solemn exhortation for us who find in the things that are seen, so oppressive, so overwhelming a power. The Visible Church, if it did nothing else for mankind, does at least this: it reminds creatures of sense and time that there is an eternity and that there is a God. We do not always feel as we ought nor give thanks as we ought for the testimony borne amongst us by the Church of Christ, as an Institution, to things spiritual and things eternal. Well may it be felt by all of us that, as in other things, so in this also, our Lord Jesus Christ showed that "He knew what was in man." Soon would the Gospel itself have been disfigured, corrupted, lost amongst men, if it had not been enshrined, as it were, in a visible temple, and established, in the eyes even of a scoffing world, among the facts and among the realities and among the institutions of earth. It is not possible for a man, in a country where Christianity has once planted its foot, altogether to ignore, however he may disregard, the great verities of a soul and a God, of a responsibility and a judgment, of a heaven and a hell. That there should be, over and above that Divine Revelation which is the study of the thoughtful, and that Divine intercourse which is the privilege of the faithful, a Visible Church, to testify to the very senses, by its ministry and by its ordinances, that there is a God, and that He is concerned and interested in the well-doing and well-being of His creatures, is a blessing above all price, in reference even to the happiness of our homes and the morality of our people. Let us beware how we allow ourselves to disparage the value of the Church of God as an institution, as an ordinance, of His providential government. We owe more to it, every one of us, than the first glance indicates. Take away the Church from amongst us, and I believe that the Gospel itself would, humanly speaking, perish with it. If God, by a perpetual miracle, were pleased still to preserve it in the hearts of the believing and faithful few, at least I am sure of this-that the world would be the poorer, and the foundations of morality itself moved and shaken. 2. But pass now from the bare existence to the characteristic features of the Holy Catholic Church of which we speak. of Holy Baptism; received, in repentance and faith, by those who come to it in full age, by the original converts of the day of Pentecost, and by all who in later times have, from providential circumstance or other interfering cause, been brought to it only in riper years. In other cases-the common case amongst us-received in infancy; received by the charitable care of others; of believing parents, desirous of having their children early “prevented with the blessings of goodness;" by the pious rule of a Church faithfully representing, as we believe, the practice of a primitive and even an apostolical age, when it says, "The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the Church as most agreeable to the institution of Christ." Such is the mode of entrance: of which we will say only that its very simplicity is a mark rather of a divine than a human origin; that its combination of material in form with spiritual in promise is characteristic of the hand which made and of the machinery which maintains us; that its neglect or disuse is ever followed by a state of disadvantage, testifying, by contrast at least, to the wisdom which devised and the love which ordained it. The Visible Church is entered through Holy Baptism. And, when entered, what is it? What does he find within who has been brought into it through this lowly portal? He finds himself in the presence of a pure Word of doctrine, and of certain grave ordinances of worship. He finds a certain Book recognised as the record of Divine truth, and the rule of human conduct. Whatever is not to be found therein, is no part of the Church's Creed. Her brief and pregnant formularies of belief are taken directly out of it. Her ministers are charged to teach what they learn from its pages, and solemnly warned how they presume to add thereto or diminish from it. He finds, wherever the Church is established in the fulness of her strength, a daily worship; everywhere a solemn public devotion on the first day of the week, set apart by apostolical order, if not by express Divine enactment, as the Sabbath of the Christian body, the special commemoration of its Lord's resurrection, the periodical type and anticipation of the rest remaining for His people. In this public worship he finds himself not alone, but one item of a corporate whole; lost in a crowd, so far as ostentation or self-parade is concerned-not lost, so far as regards the appropriateness of each word of prayer and praise to his individual case and need. And amongst the ordinances of this constituted community, he finds one remarkable above others for its simplicity and solemnity-the sacrament of the Christian growth, as the other was the sacrament of the Christian birth. When he kneels amongst his fellow-believers at the Lord's holy table, he can represent to himself more perfectly than at other times the truth of a Christian brotherhood and the reality of a Divine communion. * Article xxvii. These things, few and simple as they are, familiar as they have become to us by long acquaintance, are the chief elements of that outward fellowship and communion of which our 19th Article speaks, when it defines "the visible Church of Christ" as a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." 3. Such in the fact of its existence, and such in its characteristic features, let us look for a moment at the work which the visible Church does amongst men in behalf of Christ and of His salvation. (1) St. Paul, writing to Timothy, calls the Church in which his friend was set to minister-the Visible Church, therefore, of which we are speaking-"the pillar and ground of the truth." "These things write I unto thee that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." It is the Holy Catholic Church which bears up, as its pillar-which supports, as its basis-the very truth of God in the world. struck by such peculiarities as these: a too prominent obtrusion of the individual soul-its interests and anxieties, its fears and hopes-in place of that higher and highest regard to God's name and kingdom and will, and to the universal brotherhood of all Christian people in virtue of the universal Fatherhood of God Himself, which is the marvellous and most instructive characteristic of the one inspired model of all prayer, the prayer which our Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us. And along with this, and indeed as the necessary consequence of this, a loss of that calm and quiet assurance of God's love in Christ, of the truth of the promise that He will hear and answer the supplications of all who ask in His Son's name, which breathes in every line of our Church's Liturgy, and which has made that sound form of words the comfort of the distressed, and the pole-star of the wavering and storm-tossed, in all ages and amongst all the vicissitudes of this troublous human life. The Church is not the keeper only, but the witness too, of Holy Writ, in this not least, that she has preserved that tone of devotion, that temper and spirit in man's dealings and intercourse with his God, which would else have been lost in the individualities of a more feverish worship, to the great dishonour of our blessed Gospel, and to the disquiet and injury of many souls. Let us thank God for this, and take good heed to it. (2) There is another part of the Church's work which must not be passed over; and that is, its educational and disciplinary character, as the traising place of imperfect and struggling souls. The great majority of Christian men are through Partly in the sense in which our 20th Article calls the Church "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ." The Visible Church has been through all generations the custodian of Holy Scripture. What warrant have we for the watchful care, for the faithful transmission, of the precious books of the Divine Revelation, save that which is furnished in the continuance through all time of an organized body, of which Christ Himself said, "Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not pre-out life full of faults. The work of grace, where it vail against it?" They who will trust the Church is real, is oftentimes full of alternations. At some for nothing else, are glad—and well may they be so moments of the earthly being, you would not know -to receive at her hands, without challenge or sus- how to define a man's state, as to the great question picion, the sacred deposit of the Inspired Volume. of all. In our impatience, we are apt to settle this That upon which the Universal Church, after long question, drawing a line which Christ has warned us and anxious search, has set the seal of its authority not to draw in this life between the good and the ' as the true and complete canon of Holy Writ, all evil. We would pluck up the tares at once. We communities of professing Christians, however they would go forth into the wide waters, and weed the may differ in all else, have consented to receive and net at once of its bad and defiling contents. This to reverence as the sum of that communication which is the impatience of nature; but against it the visible God has made to His creatures through Apostles and Church maintains a firm and a scriptural protest. Prophets, through Evangelists, and through His Son. The Church makes no endeavour to settle prematurely But while this is the surest and in some senses the doubtful issues of a human existence. She adthe highest office of the Visible Church in its cha-mits all the baptized to worship within her pale; she racter of the pillar and ground of God's truth, it was not, we believe, precisely that of which St. Paul's words were first written. And we must claim for the Church this also-that her forms of public worship, handed down (in many instances) from a most remote antiquity, have kept alive amongst Christian men, as nothing else could do, a sound feeling of their proper relation to God Himself, as redeemed once for all through His Son, and brought into connection with Him individually in the appointed ordinance of initiation. It is not without reason that I press this upon your attention. When we turn to any modern books of devotion-when we notice the prevailing form (in our own times) of spiritual religion-we are gives to all the same form of words, and bids all alike use it in supplication before the God and Father of all. Like charity, she "suffereth long and is kind; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." While a man lives, she invites him to her prayers, her preaching, her sacrament; when he is sick, she visits him with her closer and more personal consolations; when he dies, she lays him in the grave with words of hope, and refuses to let her minister pronounce even over the lifeless remains any sentence of despondency or of condemnation. In all this, the Church is exercising a most important work as the school of the imperfect, as the nursery of the babe in grace. If she sought to define too sharply the conditions of a congregational worship, she would on all sides invert the desired object; she would daunt and deter the humble and self-accusing, and give an unholy boldness to the presumptuous and the hypocritical. As it is, she takes care that it shall be no parade of religion to frequent her service: a man shall come to it, if he will, unquestioned; shall speak in it only to his God, and depart from it with no feeling that he has professed himself righteous. In the same degree, the divine education goes forward unimpeded. In that privacy of publicity which is the beauty and the blessedness of a Church's devotion, a man may at once veil his deepest thoughts and yet utter them-veil them from man, and utter them to his God. When the discipline of life falls upon him-in his chief joys and saddest sorrows-when sin finds him out, and he is crying out inwardly after a God too often neglected and refused before-he can come hither with a new sense of the meaning of his act, can perform it as to One who seeth in secret, and carry back with him from his heart's communion an unsuspected answer of peace. Thus it is not least that the Church carries forward her Lord's work below, writing upon her door-posts the sweet and sacred motto, "In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength." 4. I would add, fourthly, and in the last place, that the Church never leaves it doubtful, in any of her ministrations, that a day of discrimination and severing is nevertheless before her inmates. The Gospel net is out still in the waters, but one day it must be gathered in. Then shall the Son of God send forth his Angels, and a new work of putting distinctions and differences must be strictly and severely accomplished. “When it was full," says this Parable, "they drew the net to shore, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. Even thus shall it be at the end of the world." The Visible Church is for time, not for eternity. She would depart from her office, she would break the Saviour's command, if she attempted in this world to put a mark upon the saved. All alike (except they excommunicate themselves from her by open apostacy, or be excommunicated for heinous crime) must partake in her means of grace, and be encouraged to rehearse with her her hope of glory. But this is because the work of educating souls is entrusted to her, and the work of judging souls denied. This is because the office of the Judge is held by Another-even by Him whose she is, and whose Advent she is commissioned to proclaim. When that day at last comes, for which the Church throughout her generations cherishes a watching and a waiting spirit-then will the Holy Catholic Church be analyzed, as it were, into its elements the framework of ritual and sacrament will be for ever dissolved-and the only, only question for each one of us will be, Was I a living or a dead member of the Church visible and militant-was I, all the time, in vital union with that Divine and life-giving Saviour, whose true disciples form, in His sight, a Church within a Church-a Communion of Saints within a Catholic Congregation? IX. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. "I believe in the Communion of Saints." "That ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."-1 John i. 3. No two articles of the Apostles' Creed are absolutely identical in sense. "The Holy Catholic Church," of which we before spoke, must differ in some important point from that which follows it, "the Communion of Saints." And yet the word "holy" in the one, is the same word with that rendered "saints" in the other. "Saints" are "holy persons"-"men of holiness." Holiness is consecration. It is the condition of one who is set apart from one use for another use; of one who is separated from all profane and common purposes, and dedicated to God's use and to God's service. Now that is what the Church of Christ is by title and by profession. The Visible Church has not only been redeemed, like all mankind, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; but has also been marked for God, in its individual members, by the sacrament of holy baptism; has been distinguished from the rest of the world by peculiar ordinances of worship; has been brought nigh to God Himself in the use of certain divinely appointed means of grace; and has within it those who are indeed and in truth temples of God, because the Holy Spirit of God Himself dwells in them. In these senses the Visible Church is Holy. But that holiness which is attributed to the Catholic or Universal Church on grounds such as these, is ascribed for yet higher reasons to the body which is next mentioned-the Communion of Saints. What the Holy Catholic Church is collectively, that the Communion of Saints is individually. The "saints" spoken of are men of holiness, not only in virtue of a rite of consecration and a participation in ordinances, but by reason of a personal indwelling in each one of God's Holy Spirit, working in them a true and living faith, and quickening them to all good thoughts, and words, and works. "Communion" is another word for "fellowship." It denotes that joint possession, that partnership in something, which forms a bond of society and of mutual affection, cemented by community of hopes and community of interests. "The communion of saints" is that fellowship, in feeling and intercourse, which the saints of God enjoy one with another, and with God in Christ through the Holy Ghost. "That they all may be one," is the prayer of Christ for them, "as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." "That which we have seen and heard," St. John writes, "declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." These are the two parts of the great truth before us. |