Now, if we suppose our Lord communicated the whole revelation to the apostles either by his personal teaching or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, then he communicated it to her, and she is an eye and ear witness to the fact of revelation in the same sense that the apostles were, and her historical identity with the apostles makes her a perpetual and contemporary witness to the fact of revelation and to what is revealed. What misleads not a few on this point is that they regard the church as a mere aggregation of individuals, born and dying with them, or succeeding to herself with the succession of each new generation of individuals. But this is no more the case with the church than with the human race itself, or with any particular nation that has an historical existence through several generations. In all historical bodies the generations overlap one another, and no generation of individuals is either aggregated to the body or segregated from it all at once. The body does not die with the receding nor is it born anew with the acceding generation. The church, indeed, is an organism, not a mere aggregation of individuals, but even if it were the conclusion would not follow; for though the individuals are successively aggregated or affiliated, they are aggregated or affiliated to her as a persistent body, and though they pass off successively, they leave the body standing, one and identical. This is the simple historical fact. The church, as an ever-present body, remains one and the same identical body amid all the successive changes of individuals, and is just as much the depositary of the revelation and an eye-witness of the facts recorded in the Gospels, as were the apostles themselves.