This solidarity of Catholic belief manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand it communicates the inwardness and strength of your personal faith, the “power of God” that you experience in your own conscience, to other members of the Body of Christ, in ever new impulses and stirrings, and makes them the vital experience of ever wider circles. On the other hand, this solidarity of the faith, returning so to say upon itself, becomes a fertile soil and fruitful-womb, which impregnated by the infallible teaching of the Church produces a constantly deeper insight into the marks of the faith and a constantly richer appreciation of supernatural truth. In its first aspect—as an evidential force—the solidarity of the faith manifests itself in the Catholic practice of the apostolate. The true and most eminent bearers of the apostolate are the successors of the apostles, those bishops who are united together and with the one Peter, and who are “set by the Holy Ghost over the whole earth” (Acts xx, 28). The preaching of the Gospel has been committed to them, the chosen disciples, ever since that hour when the risen Christ sent them out into the whole world and made them the promise that He would be “with them all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (Matt. xxviii, 18). Christendom, in all periods of its history, has recognized in their concordant testimony, but especially in their harmony with the See of Peter, the guarantee and sign of the true apostolic faith as contrasted with all individual “gnosis” and sectional opinion. They incarnate the “teaching Church” (ecclesia docens), and in relation to their authentic teaching the rest of the Church can only be a “learning Church” (ecclesia discens). No layman, priest, teacher, or theologian of the Church may preach the Word of God unless he be commissioned to do so by the apostolic authority of the Church (missio canonica). For, “How shall they preach, unless they be sent?” (Rom. x, 15). But however true it is that the authoritative preaching of Christian truth appertains exclusively to the apostolic teaching authority, it is equally true that the living of this truth, its realization in deed and in truth, is the business of the individual Christian conscience and of the grace which visits that conscience. And therefore the life of faith, that life which is the supreme goal of the Church’s preaching, the one thing necessary, the supernatural fruitfulness of the faith, all intimate experience, all consolation, all confidence, all nobility and lofty courage: these things do not belong to any privileged individual, but to the community, to the fellowship of all those who by baptism have been born again in Christ. Faith becomes living, and the seed of preaching strikes root and grows and bears fruit in the fellowship of the members of Christ. The spirit of the faith is never an isolated or an isolating thing, but always a spirit that presses towards fellowship, because it is derived from the Spirit of God, the Spirit of union and love. If the authorities of the Church are the instruments and bearers of the truth, it is by means of the community that the truth becomes life. It is the special task of the community to attest the truth which is proclaimed by the Church in living it, and to live it in attesting it. It is the special mission and apostolate of the community, in St. Bernard’s pregnant words, to “experience the faith in prayer.”[4] Being finally incorporated into Christ, its Head, by baptism, and being obliged to confess Him by confirmation, the community has its fundamental duty in this, that it give testimony to Christ by the superabundant wealth of its life, a duty from which no man can absolve it. Living by the faith, it gives testimony to the faith. Every life that is lived in faith is necessarily a persuasive and inspiring life, an incarnation of the apostolic message, a building of the temple of God in oneself and in others. It is that “shewing of the spirit and of power” in the face of which all unbelief is dumb, and by which all weakness is made strong. It is the most convincing proof of Christianity, more effective than all the “persuasive words of human wisdom” (1 Cor. ii, 4).