sses which are the agencies of this eternal
transfiguration.

God the Son became Incarnate, not only to accomplish the redemption of
men as yet unborn, for endless ages, through the Sacrifice of Calvary,
but also to initiate and forever maintain a new method whereby this
result was to be more perfectly attained; that is to say, the Church,
working through the specific sacramental agencies He had ordained, or
was from time to time to ordain, through His everlasting presence in the
Church He had brought into being at Pentecost. He did not come to
establish in material form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or to provide
for its ultimate coming. He indeed established a Spiritual Kingdom, His
Church, "in the world, not of it," which is a very different matter
indeed, as the centuries have proved. His Kingdom is not of this world,
nor will it be established here. There has been no _absolute_ advance in
human development since the Incarnation. Nations rise and fall, epochs
wax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink back
into savagery and oblivion. Redemption is for the individual, not for
the race, nor yet for society as a whole. Then, and only then, and under
that form, it is sure, however long may be the period of its
accomplishment. "Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to the
interpenetration of spirit," and by this resistance is the duration of
time determined. When it shall have been wholly overcome then "time
shall be no more."

See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacraments
and the method of life where they are the agents, and which they
symbolically set forth. There is in each case the material form and the
spiritual substance, or energy. Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, the
touch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely the
bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. Each a material thing, but each
representing, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit,
real, absolute and potent. So matter and spirit are linked together in
every operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man has
ever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matter
and spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of the
material thing through its agency and through its existence as the
subject for redemption. So also, through the material association, and
the divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited by