The reason and the vital basis for the existence of the Church is God’s revelation of salvation through Jesus Christ, i. e., the incarnation and the work of redemption of the Son of God and the sending of the Holy Spirit; and these divine works of salvation are the great objectives of the three great church festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, around which the cycles and days of the church year are grouped. The Church is the result of this revelation. Therefore our attention turns towards the Church, her nature, her establishment, and her extension in this world through missionary activity; further, toward her inner growth, by which she gives expression to her religious and harmonious life as a communion in solemn divine worship, and through her sacred acts and order consecrates human life unto a vessel for divine life. But this self-edification is brought about in the Church only through the Holy Spirit who dwells and lives within the Church and in and through the Church and her institutions of grace produces in the hearts of the redeemed personal conversion, sanctification, and salvation. Thus the Church grows both outwardly and inwardly and proceeds towards her eternal perfection. But the Church has to do not only with purely spiritual conditions, things divine and eternal. By her life she seeks to permeate, sanctify, and glorify all conditions, even the temporal. The Church seeks to penetrate, in a highly beneficial way, the civic community, to ennoble its affairs and impart support and exhortation both to the governing and the governed, in times of prosperity and in times of trouble. The Church is deeply interested in her educational institutions, these nurseries of time and eternity; the Christian school is not only a creation of the Church, but it needs the whole-hearted support of the Church. The Church is also deeply interested in the welfare of domestic life—she seeks to make the home a happy Christian home. The Church also desires to support and accompany the individual member throughout his course of life, especially in its more difficult stages, so that this temporal life may lead to eternal life.