The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 616

LOVE

5/6

requires a great stretch of the imagination to believe that this muddy shell of the visible Church contains such a precious They know that in this respect pearl but the initiated believe it.

Surely

it

;

the Church resembles

whom that

it

was

said

we should

:

its

glorious Head, in the days of His flesh

When we

"

desire

Him.

shall see

He

Him

there

is

;

of

no beauty

despised and rejected of men;

is

Him He was despised and we And when Herod's soldiers mocked and shamefully entreated Him, when stripped and dying He moaned upon the cross, " I thirst," no one but those who looked beneath the surface could surmise that this man was the Lord of Glory. And yet so He proved to be. " He received beauty for ashes, the oil we

hid, as it

were, our faces from

esteemed Him

;

not."

of joy for mourning, the

garment

of praise for the spirit of heavi-

Church while on earth. When beauty that we should desire her she is no we despised and rejected. Every one is, as it were, hiding his face from her. Still, she is the Lamb's Bride-elect; and the holy Church, which without spot or wrinkle shall one day be presented

And so

ness."

it

may be

said of the

see her, there is

to the

;

heavenly Bridegroom,

is

concealed within her.

And

Love must celebrate its triumph in the Church. The newness of the commandment, " Love one another,"

there-

fore holy

consists

being freed from the bonds of the Jewish national And tho it character, love can effectually operate in the Church. be objected a thousand times that love is nowhere a greater stranin the fact that,

ger than in the Church, and that rather strife and division, backbiting and devouring one another, always have seemed to be the order of the day, yet this lamentable fact does not alter the fore-

going positive statement. It should be remembered, in the ^/'.y/ place, that sion assume the fiercest aspect

among

strife

and

divi-

those that are most closely

between brothers and sisters they are more serious than between strangers. Cain and Abel were too intimately connected. This is why differences between husband and wife leave such deep and painful impressions. Their mutual love can not treat the mat-

related

;

ter lightly.

It is the

very intimacy of the relation that gives the

difference such a serious character.

we should not forget that even in the Church strife and make the loudest noise, while love unseen quietly pursues

Secondly,

division its

way.

Among

communion

the initiated in the Church there ever has been a

of soul

which has nowhere

its

equal

— an

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