Thus in the union of the soul and body, in the constitution and authority of the human commonwealth, and in the race’s natural unity, God holds before us three analogies, which each in some respect, and altogether very largely, illustrate His finished work, to which all natural productions of His providence are subordinate, His work of predilection, His work of unbounded love and sovereign magnificence, the creation of that which is at once the Body, the Kingdom, and the Family of the Incarnate Word. From all that has gone before we gather this conclusion, that to become a Christian was to enter into a spiritual and physical(107) unity with Christ by incorporation into that Body which He had created as the result of His becoming man. This it was for the individual to become a Christian. But Christianity itself was neither a mere system of belief, nor an outward order representing that belief; but “the great and glorious Body of Christ,”(108) possessing and exhibiting the whole truth of doctrine, possessing and distributing all the means of grace, and presenting together to God those whom it had reconciled with Him, and made one, as the members of the Son by the indwelling of the Spirit. Let us now trace the exact correspondence of the historical fact with the dogmatic statement just given. The Acts of the Apostles exhibit to us the creation of the divine society by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. When they were all together, the sound as of a rushing mighty wind was heard, which filled the whole house wherein they were sitting, and tongues as of fire were seen, the tongues apportioned severally, but the fire one,(109) which rested upon each, to kindle in all that eternal flame of charity which was to draw into one the hearts of men, the fire of which our Lord had spoken as being that which He was come to light upon the earth. Fire, whose inward nature it is at once to illuminate and warm, to purify and unite, was thus appropriately selected as the outward sign, both expressing and conveying the fourfold office of the Comforter, who came to be “no longer an occasional visitant, but a perpetual Consoler and eternal Inhabitant”(110) of this His chosen home. As each in that assembly spoke in the one tongue of the country, he was heard by those present in the several tongues of all the nations of the earth represented at that great feast by the Jews who dwelt in them. And this was the mark, says S. Augustine,(111) of the Church which was to be through all nations, and that no one should receive the Holy Spirit, save he who should be jointed into the framework of its unity; the mark which signified that the confusion of Babel, dividing the race into nationalities jealous of each other and perpetual enemies, was to be reversed and overcome by the one Power whose force to unite should be greater than the force of sin to sever; who should gather out of all nations the City of God, fed by the