Now the divine mind is so far above us that we can reach it only if God Himself brings it down to us. He has to descend, to lift the veil from His immensity, not by opening to us, before the time, those sacred precincts which "eye hath never seen," but by emitting a ray of light to clear up our darkness, to give us a glimpse of the awful splendor which vibrates in those celestial realms where light and sound and warmth of eternal charity mingle in the sweet harmony of the divine Beauty whose tones speak now to our senses in separate forms. God descends to our humility to interpret His own image. First He came in human form, and told us all the things we were to believe and do. Then He sent the Paraclete, and under His direction men of God taught the same things. Then they wrote them, or, as St. John tells us, some of them. The Paraclete veils Himself, as our Lord had announced to His Apostles, in the Church, whose divinely constituted earthly chief was to be Peter--to the end of time. The Church, therefore, founded by Christ, and an ever-living emanation of the incessant activity of the Holy Spirit, although necessarily speaking to men through men, is the first and surest interpreter of the purpose and meaning of each and every part of Holy Writ. And because God cannot contradict Himself it follows that every truth of the written word must correspond with every truth of the spoken word. In doubtful cases, therefore, as to the meaning of a word or text in the Sacred Writings, we have recourse to the supreme, divinely-guided judgment of the Church. Her doctrines, defined, are the first and most important criterion of Scriptural truth.