In the Body, as well as in each single member of it, and the more because the Body is an incomparably grander creation, it is the sanctified intellect which must receive, harmonise, and develope the truth. If the sevenfold fountain of the Spirit’s gifts is one in the individual, much more is it one in that Body out of whose plenitude the individual receives. Thus wherever the Apostles preached the word, if faith made it fruitful, they bestowed the sacraments. We shall see, if we observe it closely, that it is a triple cord through which the Holy Spirit conveys His life perpetually to the Body; and in His life is the Truth. First, there is the succession of men. As the Word Incarnate taught, so men bear on His teaching. Personal labours, intercourse from mouth to mouth, the action of men on men, the suffering of men for men, this was from the beginning, this is to be for ever, the mode of spreading His kingdom. It is not a paper kingdom, it cannot be printed off and disseminated by the post. But from His own Person it passed to Peter and the Apostles, and from them to a perpetual succession of men, whose special work it is to continue on this line by a chain never to be broken. These are the messengers, or heralds, or stewards, or ministers, or teachers, or shepherds. They are all and each of these according to the manifoldness of the gift which they carry. Through the unbrokenness of this line the continuity of the gift is secured. Through it the Redeemer, King, and Head touches, as it were, each point of time and space, and with a personal ministry lays hold of each individual through the vast extent of His kingdom in time and space. And the gift is as living and as near to Him now as it was when S. Paul spoke of it as communicated by the imposition of his hands to his disciple; nay, as it was when He himself breathed on His Apostles together assembled, and said, “Receive the Holy Ghost;” and will be equally living and direct from Him to the last who shall receive it to the end of time. And all this because these men who are taken up into this succession are the nerves of His mystical Body, through which runs the supply to all the members. This is the indestructible framework which He has wrought for carrying on to men His own teaching, until the whole mass grow up to that fulness of the perfect stature which He has foreseen and determined.