And so I find the living Christ by means of the living Church. That is as true today as it was on the first day. My faith in Christ is given me basically and preparatorily by the living apostolic word, perfectly and fulfillingly by the living Pentecostal Spirit. Like the apostles, the Church in her living teaching sets before me the image of the Lord, as the Bible luminously portrays Him, and as she has borne Him still more lovingly and radiantly for centuries in her heart. In a full and true sense she can say that she herself has seen this Jesus, that she stood beneath His Cross, and that she heard His Easter greeting: Peace be to you. Therefore she brings me into the closest historical relation to Jesus. She eliminates time from His picture, and she puts me in religious contact with Him. She can point out that the message of Jesus is not only recorded in lifeless parchment, but is embedded in world history by imperishable signs and wonders, that it is confirmed by a Life and Death of unsurpassable purity and innocence and by a Resurrection of dazzling glory, that it has been sealed by the life-blood of thousands and has given countless multitudes of her sons and daughters a new heart and a new conscience. She can assert further that no other religion has ever approached even distantly the moral and religious sublimity of Christianity. And she can maintain that the radiance of this divinity flashes forth and is externally manifested today also in noble saintly figures, that it attests itself in graces that appear ever and again with new brilliance, and in miraculous gifts.

Since her apostolic word proclaims and attests this and much else, the Church can make credible to me the supernatural mystery of Jesus. Her preaching prepares the way for my faith in Jesus. Her testimony becomes in that measure a motive of credibility, as the School expresses it, but is not yet a true motive of faith. It gives me human faith, a certitude which is not as yet absolute, which is still frail.