Believed in everywhere.
"The common faith." Amid all diversities there is unity. In this sense we know that what is called "Catholic" authority rests on what was believed "always, everywhere, and by all." Theories of religion vary, but the great facts and doctrines are the things which cannot be shaken, and still remain. The word "faith" is sometimes used for that experience of the soul which we call trust, and as such is an inward reception of Christ and his cross; but it is also used, and is so used here, as descriptive of the gospel revelation itself.
I. THE APOSTLES DIE, BUT THE FAITH REMAINS. We are not disciples of Paul, or Barnabas, or Timothy, or Titus, but of Christ. These apostles did not draw men to themselves, but to Christ. They were, as Paul declares, "ministers by whom ye believed." To be in the true succession is to have the spirit of the apostles, and to hold the faith of the apostles. So far as the gospel has been perverted by mediaeval superstition or the earlier traditions of the fathers, it is not the common faith. An inspired revelation of truth enables us in every age to preserve the common faith. As the philosophic Coleridge said, "It is evident that John and Paul held Christ to be Divine." The glorious gospel of the grace of God is preserved to us intact by the holy Gospels and the Epistles, and men true to the Bible harmonize in their acceptance of "the common faith."
II. THE LIFE OF THE TRUE CHURCH IS THE SAME IN EVERY AGE. The root must be the same, because the fruit is the same. First truth and then life. The cry for forgiveness, and the peace that comes through the cross. The power of the atonement to crucify selfishness, and to lead men to live as not their own. The consciousness of human impotence, and of the might of the Holy Spirit in the inner man. All these are inward experiences of life, resulting from a common faith. Added to these are the experiences which attest life in conduct. We know the same artist's touch in the picture, the same sculptor's hand in the molding of a figure, the same architect's design in the buildings; and we know Christians by the "life hid with Christ in God," producing those "fruits of the Spirit" which attest, in their beauty and their purity, the energy and the sanctity of the Divine life. It is "the common faith" which gives to Christians, in every land and every age, the same likeness to their Lord.—W.M.S.