Here again we observe the essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. The special characteristic of Protestantism is isolation, abrupt separation and schism, not only in the sphere of Church government, but in that of religion generally. Protestantism separates reason from faith, justification from sanctification, religion from morality, nature from supernature, and so it introduces a cleavage into the domain of God’s loving and gracious activity. When Luther narrowed the scriptural idea of God’s all-efficiency into the doctrine of His sole efficiency, he cut the native strength of the creature loose from its moorings in God, and delivered it over to total unfruitfulness. According to Luther’s view, the stream of God’s mercy flows only over the justified, and there is no creative radiance of His love within the soul, no bursting forth and concurrent flow of the soul’s powers under the touch and stimulus of His love, no confluence of this new wealth with God’s abundance, no living of Christ in His members. God alone is the agent and active force, God the supreme and infinite Spirit, and not the God who has taken our human nature, and who through that nature works and suffers, redeems and sanctifies, as though through His members. How different the belief of Catholicism! The Catholic cannot think of the good God without thinking at the same time of the Word made Flesh, and of all His members who are united to Him by faith and love in a real unity. The God of Catholicism is the transcendent, absolute God, who became Man for us in His Son, and therefore no solitary God, but the God of angels and saints, the God of fruitfulness and abundance, the God who with a veritable divine folly by the incomprehensible decree of His most free Will takes up into Himself the whole creation that culminates in human nature, and in a new, unheard of supernatural manner, “lives in it,” “moves” in it, and in it “is” (cf. Acts XVii, 28). That is the basis upon which the Catholic veneration of the saints and of Mary must be judged. To the Catholic the saints are not mere exalted patterns of behavior, but living members, and even constructive powers of the Body of Christ. They possess therefore, not merely a moral, but also a religious significance. Like the apostles and prophets, upon whom they are founded (Eph. ii, 20), they are essentially and for ever the fellow- workers of Christ (2 Cor. vi, 1), His servants (Mt. x, 24) and marriage guests (Mt. ix, 15), His friends (Jn. xv, 14) and His glory (2 Cor. viii, 23). They have all an abiding inward relation, a real and vital connection with the whole Christ (totus Christus), and their importance for the welfare of the whole Body depends upon the special function which they have to fulfill within its organism.