Chapter I

We learn the sanctity, the holiness, which Christ looks for in His Church.

The Church of Christ is holy: it consists of those who have separated themselves from the world and its defilements, and who have set themselves apart--body, soul, and spirit--for Christ's service. That, I say, is the Church's ideal. But we know, alas! only too well, how far short the Church on earth falls of that--how much worldliness, and vanity, and ambition--yes, and even grosser sins--mingle with our holy things.

But we must keep God's ideal ever before us, that ideal which assures us that God, by His Spirit, actually dwells in His Church, dwells in the heart of each individual believer. Only when we remember that, can we see how great was Ananias's sin. "_He lied to the Holy Ghost: he lied not unto men, but unto God_." As by God's Spirit his heart had been enlightened and opened to the knowledge of the truth: so now against that Spirit he had deliberately sinned.

Such a sin could not pass unpunished. Had that been allowed, the false impression would have got abroad that God was easy and tolerant of sin. Rather it was necessary "that men should be taught once for all, by sudden death treading swiftly on the heels of detected sin, that the gospel, which discovers God's boundless mercy, has not wiped out the sterner attributes of the Judge."[1]