Moreover, as a fourth cause, the historic origin of their name and belief led them up to that day of Pentecost when the descent of the Spirit of God constituted the formation of that body in belonging to which was all their hope and trust; with the existence of which their faith was identified; in the communion of which their charity was engendered. As the birth and the life and the passion of Christ were that subject-matter on which their whole faith grew, so the creation of their existence as a people was a definite act in which the Redeemer showed Himself the Father of His Race, creating them as His children and generating them by His Spirit. The loving thought of Christians in every age ran along this line to its source. Nature herself presents us with an image of what this idea of the Church was to them. As the great river whose water is the symbol of blessing and the bearer of fertility leaps down a giant birth from its parent lake, ever blazing under the splendour of a tropical sun, yet ever fed by sources springing from snow-crowned mountains, and changes in its course the desert into earth’s fruitfulest region, so the river of God, welling forth on the day of Pentecost from the central abyss of the divine love, bore down to all the nations the one water of salvation, and wheresoever it spread, the desert retreated, and the earth brought forth corn and wine in abundance. And the idea of this divine stream was from the beginning as deep as it was clear in every Christian heart. It is one of a very few doctrines, such as the unity of the Godhead, whereof indeed it is the image and the result, of which there is not only an implicit belief but a definite consciousness from the first. For the thought of the kingdom is inseparable from that of the king: and he could be no divine Sovereign whose realm was not one and indivisible: and that this realm should break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms,(287) but itself stand for ever, was the trust on which the whole Christian life of endurance and hope was built.