The songs of a Paul Gerhard, the St. Matthew Passion of a Sebastian Bach and the oratorios of a Handel affect us almost as “sweet melodies from our old family home.”[8] And not merely a Christian life, but a complete and lofty Christian life, a life according to the “full age of Christ,” a saintly life, is possible—so Catholics believe—even in definitely non-Catholic communions. It is true that it cannot develop with that luxuriance which is possible in the Church, where is the fullness of Jesus and His Body; and it will never be anti-Catholic in its quality. Yet it will be a genuine saintly life; since, wherever grace is, the noble fruits of grace can ripen. Such saintly figures have appeared and do still appear, especially in the Russian Church, which has preserved the fullest measure of the ancient inheritance. Consider the saintly characters of a Dmitri, an Innocens, a Tykhon, a Theodosius.[9] Nor are saints and martyrs impossible, on Catholic principles, even in the Protestant churches.[10] Nay, it is Catholic teaching that the grace of Christ operates, not only in the Christian communions, but also in the non-Christian world, in Jews and in Turks and in Japanese.[11] Every Catholic catechism, when it explains the ordinary form of baptism, lays emphasis also on that extraordinary form which is called baptism of desire. By that is meant that perfect love, evoked and supported by the redeeming grace of Jesus, has power to sanctify the soul, and that that soul so decisively affirms the will of God that it would at once receive baptism, if it knew of that sacrament or could receive it. As God sends His rain and His sunshine upon all, so does He send His conquering grace into the hearts of all those who hold themselves ready for it, who do what in them lies, who perform what their conscience bids them. Since Christ appeared on earth and founded His Kingdom of God, there is no longer any purely natural morality, however much such a natural morality may be possible in itself. Wherever conscience is astir, wherever men are alive to God and His Holy Will, there and at the same time the grace of Christ co-operates and lays in the soul the seeds of the new supernatural life. Heiler himself, without observing the violent contradiction with his assertion that the later Church has narrowed Catholicism, cites that distinguished Catholic theologian, the Jesuit Cardinal Juan de Lugo, as summarizing Catholic teaching in this manner: “God gives light, sufficient for its salvation, to every soul that attains to the use of reason in this life … the various philosophical schools and religious bodies throughout mankind all contain and hand down, amid various degrees of human error and distortion, some truth, some gleams and elements of divine truth … the soul that in good faith seeks God, His truth and love, concentrates its attention, under the influence of grace, upon these elements of truth, be they many or few, which are offered to it in the sacred books and religious schools and assemblies of the Church, Sect, or Philosophy in which it has been brought up. It feeds upon these elements, the others are simply passed by; and divine grace, under cover of these elements, feeds and saves this soul.”[12] It is therefore de Lugo’s precise opinion—and it is the opinion of the Church’s theologians in general—that all those elements or “seeds” of truth which are dispersed in the most multifarious sects, philosophical schools, and religious communions can provide a basis and starting point for the grace of Christ, so that the natural man may be elevated into the new supernatural man of faith and love. The Church rightly maintains and continually reiterates, in decisive and uncompromising fashion, her claim to be the sole true Body of Christ; but at the same time she holds a generous and large-minded view regarding the activity of Christ’s grace. That activity has no bounds or limits, but is as infinite as the love of God.