most more than to extend the Church, to give it
spiritual, moral, and social reality, rather than to multiply a
membership which means little. For if men can understand the meaning
of the Church, as the city of God, the family of God, the sanctuary of
God, in the world, there is little fear that whatever is good in
humanity will fail of allegiance to her. The kings of the earth will
bring their glory and honour into her, and the nations of the earth
shall walk in her light.

[1] Sanday and Headlam's _Romans_, pp. 122-124.

[2] Hebr. ix. 8.

[3] 1 Peter ii. 4.

[4] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v.-vi. 11.

[5] Col. i. 28.

[6] Luke xii. 42.

[7] Gal. iv. 11; v. 1.

[8] Col. ii. 20-22.

[9] Cor. xi. 2, 16.

[10] Tit. iii. 10.

[11] John ii. 19-21.

[12] Acts xv. 16.

[13] See app. note D, p. 264, on the Brotherhood of St. Andrew.

{121}

DIVISION I. Sec. 5. CHAPTER III.

_Paul the apostle of catholicity._

[Sidenote: _Paul the apostle of catholicity_]

St. Paul has unfolded the dimensions of the revelation of God given in
the catholic church. The interests of the whole of mankind and of the
whole universe which it is to subserve--that is its breadth: the
eternal and slowly realized intention of God of which it is the
expression--that is its length: the spiritual elevation up to which it
takes men--that is its height: the gulf of sin and misery from which it
rescues them--that is its depth. And now he is about to press upon the
Asiatic Christians the moral obligations which this great catholic
brotherhood involves. He begins his exhortation and enforces it by
reminding them of what he was enduring as a prisoner for Christ's
sake--'For this cause (i.e. seeing that all this is true), I, Paul, the
prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you, the Gentiles.' But when he
has thus made a beginning, he pauses to add weight {122} to his appeal
by emphasizing a personal but very important consideration. The
particular truth of the catholicity of the Church had been in quite a
special sense entrusted to him, Paul, personally, as apostle of the
Gentiles. He assumes that they have heard of this, his special
commission, and that it was the subject of a special revelation to
himself[1]. Indeed the fact must have formed part of his teaching at
Ephesus and throughout Asia, for his mind was full of it; he had
contended for it against strong opposition in his epistle to the
Galatians[2]; he had asserted