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possible that the inherent riches of the organism of the Church find better and fuller expression
in the present variety of Churches than they would in a single external organization. This does
not mean, of course, that the Church should not strive for a greater measure of external unity.
The ideal should always be to give the most adequate expression to the unity of the Church. At
the present time there is a rather strong Church union movement, but this movement, as it has
developed up to this time, though undoubtedly springing from laudable motives on the part of
some, is still of rather doubtful value. Whatever external union is effected must be the natural
expression of an existing inner unity, but the present movement partly seeks to fabricate an
external union where no inner unity is found, forgetting that “no artificial aggregation that
seeks to unify natural disparities can afford a guarantee against the strife of parties within the
aggregation.” It is un-Scriptural in so far as it has been seeking unity at the expense of the truth
and has been riding the wave of subjectivism in religion. Unless it changes colour and strives for
greater unity in the truth, it will not be productive of real unity but only of uniformity, and while
it may make the Church more efficient from a business point of view, it will not add to the true
spiritual efficiency of the Church. Barth sounds the right note when he says: “The quest for the
unity of the Church must in fact be identical with the quest for Jesus Christ as the concrete
Head and Lord of the Church. The blessing of unity cannot be separated from Him who blesses,
in Him it has its source and reality, through His Word and Spirit it is revealed to us, and only in
faith can it become a reality among us.”[The Church and the Churches, p. 28.]
2. THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH.
a. The Roman Catholic conception.
The Roman Catholic conception of the holiness of the
Church is also primarily of an external character. It is not the inner holiness of the members of
the Church through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, but the outer ceremonial holiness
that is placed in the foreground. According to Father Devine the Church is holy first of all “in her
dogmas, in her moral precepts, in her worship, in her discipline,” in which “all is pure and
irreproachable, all is of such a nature as is calculated to remove evil and wickedness, and to
promote the most exalted virtue.”[The Creed Explained, p. 285.] Only secondarily is the
holiness of the Church conceived of as moral. Father Deharbe says that the Church is also holy,
“because there were in her at all times saints whose holiness God has also confirmed by
miracles and extraordinary graces.”[Catechism of the Catholic Religion, p. 140.]
b. Protestant conception.
Protestants, however, have quite a different conception of the
holiness of the Church. They maintain that the Church is absolutely holy in an objective sense,
that is, as she is considered in Jesus Christ. In virtue of the mediatorial righteousness of Christ,
the Church is accounted holy before God. In a relative sense they also regard the Church as
being subjectively holy, that is, as actually holy in the inner principle of her life and destined for