The Christ is as it were one infinite body, wherein all the parts and members are mutually helpful and interdependent. In the unity of the same organism there cannot be inharmonious contradictory parts. Hand cannot say to foot, I have no need of you. Ear and eye are different members and have different functions, but what if the ear said to the eye, “because I am different from you, we belong to different bodies,” would it be true? And so all of us were baptised into one vast body, the infinite Christ, — Jews, Greeks, slaves, and free — and we all drank the wine of the one Spirit. Hence these different gifts, functions and offices which operate in us. This very variety constitutes the essential being of the Spirit, because the Spirit includes all. If the body were all eye, where would the hearing be? If it were all ear, where would the eyebrow be? Every part is beautifully formed to assist and be complementary to the others; none is otiose, negligible or useless, but on the contrary those very parts which are held in least honour often have the most important functions, and the visible parts of the body which form its beauty are the most dependent on the organs which are not seen and are less esteemed. If one member suffer, all suffer with it, and no one part of the body can be affected, for good or ill, without all the others feeling it. So is it in that infinite spiritual body of the Christ, which we together constitute, of which we are all members. Whether in the church there be those that are called apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, helpers, officers, speakers with tongues — what is this but the activity of one life?
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