The Christian Church is a livingbody, and one,not a mere framework artificially arranged to look like one. Its being alive is what makes it one; were it dead, it would consist of as many parts as it has members: but the living Spirit of God came down upon it at Pentecost, and made it one by giving it life.
I. The Church, properly considered, is that great company of the elect which has been separated by God's free grace, and His Spirit working in due season, from this sinful world, regenerated, and vouchsafed perseverance unto life eternal. Viewed so far as it merely consists of persons now living in this world, it is of course a visible company; but in its nobler and truer character it is a body invisible, or nearly so, as being made up not merely of the few who happen to be still on their trial, but of the many who sleep in the Lord. This invisible body is the true Church, because it changes not, though it is ever increasing. Such is the efficacy of that inexhaustible grace which Christ has lodged in His Church, as a principle of life and increase, until He comes again. The expiring breath of His saints is but the quickening of dead souls.
II. These thoughts are very different from the world's ordinary view of things, which walks by sight, not by faith. When the souls of Christians pass from it into the place of spirits, it fancies that this is their loss, not its own. It pities them, too, as thinking that they do not witness the termination of what they began or saw beginning, that they are ignorant of the fortunes of their friends or of the Church, or rather careless about them; as being insensible and but shadows, and ghosts, not substances, as if we who live were the real agents in the course of events, and they were attached to us only as a churchyard to a church, which it is decent to respect, unsuitable to linger in. Such is its opinion of the departed; yet with the views opened on us in the Gospel, with the knowledge that the one Spirit of Christ ever abides, and that those who are made one with Him are never parted from Him, and that those who die in Him are irrevocably knit into Him and one with Him, shall we dare to think slightingly of these indefectible members of Christ and vessels of future glory? Shall we not dimly recognise amid the aisles of our churches and along our cloisters, about our ancient tombs and in ruined and desolate places, which once were held sacred not in cold poetical fancy, but by the eye of faith, the spirits of our fathers and brethren of every time, past and present, whose works have long been "known" to God, and whose former dwelling-places remain among us, pledges, as we trust, that He will not utterly forsake us and make an end?
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. iv., p. 168.
Reference: Psalms 145:13. Bishop Alexander, Bampton Lectures,1876, p. 159.