Church triumphant

“ I often anticipate the period when, I hope, we shall often yet meet on praying ground—in the church militant, and finally, in the church triumphant. At present the church is in a militant state; the term is military, and implies a warfare, contending powers, within and without. The worst lays within—every evil done in this world, and every sin in devils; we have the root of them in our hearts ”

“ What a power is in a creed and a service which thus links us with the past! As we listen to the Te Deum or the Litany, we are carried back not only to the Middle Ages, but to the days of persecution, when "the noble army of martyrs" was not a name; when the Church worshipped in crypts and catacombs. Perhaps we of other communions do not consider enough the influence of a Church which has a long history, and whose very service seems to unite the living and the dead—the worship on earth with the worship in heaven. ”

“ All that came to pass precisely as the Saint foretold, and the present generation seems to be seeing the beginning of the fulfilment of her closing prophecy: “At last, after many and varied trials and humiliations, the Church shall achieve, before the eyes of the world, such a glorious triumph that men will be struck silent with awe and admiration.” ”

“ It is a work for the glory and honor of the Good and Supreme Ruler of all things, and it cannot fail to bring down blessings on ourselves and all who come after us. The erection of a church is a noble and substantial act of faith; not expressed in words but built up in enduring brick and stone, and thus stronger and more complete than mere words. It shows that you honor God and love your religion; that you are anxious for the glory of the House of God, and wish its rites to be fitly celebrated. ”

“ A Church that could preserve its spiritual life for over two hundred years in the midst of pagan hatred and pagan corruption, without any sacramental help but that of baptism, and without priests, without preaching, without the Holy Sacrifice, and could present itself to the world at the end of that long period of trial and privation with 50,000 Christians, the remnants of those other hundreds and hundreds of thousands who, through the centuries, had never faltered in their allegiance to Christ, was not a failure. ”

“ The perpetual rejuvenation of the church herself when apparently crushed and disintegrated beneath the load of kingly oppression and the lawlessness of the mob, is in itself not only a perpetual miracle, but the evident fulfilment of the promises of the Founder to be with her all days even to the consummation of the world. The lives of the grand throng of saints, martyrs, confessors, and missionaries—the glory and pride of the church—their sufferings, triumphs, and miracles ”

“ The priest must consecrate; the priest must administer; or there is no divinely authorized memorial of the one everlasting sacrifice. No such memorial, where is the recognized bond, connecting the body on earth to its glorified Head in heaven? No such bond, what becomes of the Church, and what assurance has she of an eternal inheritance? That bond secure, the Church is invincible and immortal; the city of God stands upon a rock which no shock of colliding worlds can shake; all her happy people, instinct with the life of their Lord, walking in white robes her streets of gold. ”

“ The writers of these Nineteen Articles fail to see anywhere in the world a divinely established and spiritually endowed Church of Jesus Christ. They are determined to live in purity and love, to avoid dissension and strife, to guard their membership in the invisible Church, and to wait in faith for the outpouring of the Spirit and the bestowal of miraculous gifts for the restoration of the Church in its pristine apostolic purity and power. ”

“ It is the Catholic Church only which retains the true worship. This Church is the fountain of truth, it is the house of faith, it is the temple of God. If any one either comes not into this Church, or departs from it, his eternal salvation is desperate. No one must flatter himself obsti­nately, for his soul and salvation are at stake. ”

“ It was this fearless and powerful spirit, keen and quick to see inferences and intolerant of compromises, that the disturbances of Roman Catholic Emancipation and of the Reform time roused from the common round of pursuits, natural to a serious and thoughtful clergyman of scholarlike mind and as yet no definite objects, and brought him with all his enthusiasm and thoroughness into a companionship with men who had devoted their lives, and given up every worldly object, to save the Church by raising it to its original idea and spirit. ”

“ What to the sinner, borne down by the mighty weight of transgression? What to the dying man, who knows not how to prepare to meet his God? We need the Church of Christ—the Church whose great aim it is, and always has been, to renew and regenerate the soul from its foundation, to lay the axe at the root of the tree of evil, and the very sound of whose bell, rolling its waves of music over the sleeping hills on the Sabbath morning, is worth more to the soul than a thousand lyceums and debating societies. ”

“ The service of the Church is more than a consecration of duty. It is a bearing witness to the Truth, a watching till He come, an expectancy, a getting into position for a great procession, a carrying of banners and emblems, a joining in a universal hymn sung not only by ourselves but by all the dead. The light of the Church is the light of transfiguration, not the light of common day, it is the light of the halo round the saint’s head. ”

“ God is a wall of fire round about her, and her glory in the midst of her. The Roman Church is made glorious by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by spiritual might and force, by truth, grace, and sanctity. These same divine gifts and powers pervade the whole Catholic Church by virtue of communion with the See of the Vicar of Christ. The burning light of faith, the burning fire of charity, are concentrated within, and diffused all around the Catholic Church, constituting all her glory and all her power, and by these she illumines and inflames the whole world. ”

“ To ensure this the father of the faithful sets the whole Catholic world together praying, and fasting, and giving alms, and confessing their sins, and making holy, devout communion, so as to take heaven by storm, as our Lord said we might. "For the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." What a sublime spectacle, which only the Catholic Church can show—two hundred and fifty millions of people all turning to God at once! No wonder the Catholic Church saves the world. ”

“ Having found this present, immanent Spirit and being deeply convinced that all that really matters happens in the dread region of the human heart, they turned away from all ceremonies and sacraments and tried to form a Church which should be purely and simply a Communion of saints—a brotherhood of believers living in the joy of an inward experience of God, and bound together in common love to Christ and in common service to all who are potential sons of God. ”

“ Our Churches are set apart for the worship of God as much as the Temple was; and if we do not worship God when we go for that purpose, we displease our heavenly Father. Everything belonging to God must be treated with reverence, and honoured by being used according to His Will. In this way, therefore, we must reverence and honour His day, His house, and His word. You will thus see that being careless and inattentive at Church is a great sin. ”

“ It is the glory of the church that she has the Lord for her God, that to her pertain the adoption and the service of God; and with the abundance of this glory we must be delighted. We must take more pleasure in our relation to God and communion with him than in all the delights of the sons and daughters of men. Whatever is the glory of the church must be our glory and joy, particularly her purity, unity, and increase. ”

“ If one was a figure of the first, or perfect church, as sanctioned by God, is not the other the church stripped of all her spiritual gifts and graces, and adorned with the works of men? It is plain to my mind that it is. ”

“ Those who have followed with anxious sympathy that great restorative movement which, for twelve years, has agitated her bosom,—those who have felt with an ever increasing conviction, as time went on, and the different parties consolidated and unfolded themselves, that it was at the bottom a contest for the ancient faith delivered to the saints, for dogmatic truth, for a visible Church, in whom, as in a great sacrament, was lodged the presence of the Lord, communicating Himself by a thousand acts of spiritual efficacy, against the monstrous and shapeless latitudinarianism of the day ”

“ The idea of the church itself, of an esoteric band of Christians amid the temptations of the world, bound together by rules of discipline as well as communion of soul, is full of grandeur and beauty. And the unity of this church is a sublime conception, on which the whole spiritual power of the popes rested when they attempted to rule in peace and on the principles of eternal love. However perverted the idea of the unity of the church became in the Middle Ages, still who can deny that it was the mission of the church to create a spiritual power based on the hopes and fears of a future life? ”

“ The canons were chanting the Office when we entered, and looked like bishops in their flowing purple robes. The service ended with a procession around the church, the clergy in magnificent copes, heavy with ancient embroidery in gold. The people were all devout. No careless ways, as in many places where religion sits lightly on the people, but an earnestness and devotion that were impressive. ”

“ And the constitution of the Church is still unchanged; and our high calling in Christ Jesus has never been revoked; and your bishops and clergy to-day are but heralds and incense-bearers in the train of Immanuel's triumph; and every faithful communicant, and every baptized believer, and every humble neophyte, are triumphing with the heavenly Conqueror. Surely here is a demand for all our faith, for all our zeal, for all our moral heroism; and for an embassy like ours, "more than twelve legions of angels" might have been commissioned from the skies. Alas! where sleep our energies? ”

“ With the first faint light of dawn the prayers cease, the supplicants arise, and the Bishop puts on his vestments, one by one [57] and with a special prayer for each, because he thus figures the Son of God putting on the garment of our humanity. And because Christ, as man, prayed to His Father and ours, the Bishop comes forth from the tent and prostrates himself before the steps of the Church in fervent prayer, with all his clergy kneeling around him.
Now the natural soul is cold and blind, and closed to Grace; so the Church stands, unlighted and with fast closed doors. ”

“ Every one brings his own understanding and faith and insight, and the great Church is to him what he has capacity to understand and to receive. The great majority of worshippers could not draw a fine of the plans or expound a law of the construction, or set a stone in its place, yet the whole of it is theirs and for them, and their reverent awe, even if they have no further understanding, adds a spiritual grace and a fuller dignity to the whole. ”

“ I assure you, a day has not passed without my offering up my unworthy prayers to Almighty God in your behalf; and I cannot refrain from again saying, that I hope one day we shall be united in the same faith of the One Holy and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. How great is the consolation to belong to that holy Church which alone Jesus Christ has founded, which alone He has illustrated with a never-failing succession of {188} pastors and of miracles, from which all others have separated, and out of which I find in the Holy Scriptures no covenanted promise of salvation! ”

“ Then the abiding eternal soul knows its own reality and its oneness with the Divine and eternal, and the sacrifice of Christ is a real living thing—and in the men's sacrifice they are very near to Him.
So the Churches are being tested, too, in this great crisis, and in a reconstructed world we shall want Churches that carry the message of Christianity with a clearer and firmer voice, but that is the task of all believers. We cannot cast the duty of making the Church a living witness on our priests alone—it is our work, and unless our faith goes into everything we do, it is no use. ”

“ Let the reform come from within the church. The church is something more than either its creeds, its clergy, or its laymen. Look at your cathedral rising out of and dominating Princhester. It stands not simply for Athanasius; it stands but incidentally for Athanasius; it stands for all religion. Within that fabric—let me be as frank here as in our private conversation—doctrine has altered again and again. To-day two distinct religions worship there side by side; one that fades and one that grows brighter. ”

“ There never has been a day for ages and ages, not since the true church was destroyed after the days of the Apostles, that required the faith and the energy of godly men and godly women, and the skill, wisdom, and power of the Almighty to be with them, so much as this people require it at the present time. ”