Hart, Saittuol, 1845-1917. The witness of the church BX 5995 .H36 A3 1916 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH The Bishop Paddock Lectures 1915-16 BY THB SAME AUTHOR FAITH AND THE FAITH The Bohlen Lectttres, 1914 Crown 8vo, Net $0.80 A Manual of SHORT DAILY PRAYERS FOR Families Compiled by The Rev. SamuelHabt, D.D. Printed in Red and Black. Net $0.60 LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH ^^^ir"*. V N^ mt ^abtiotfe Eectureg 191546 \%^ ^,^j,v> BY SAMUEL HART DEAN OF BKKKELET DIVIWITT SCHOOL LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON BOMBAY, CALCtnTA, AND MADRAS 1916 Copyright, 1916 BT SAMUELIHART THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURESHIP This Lectureship was founded in 1880, with an en- dowment of ten thousand dollars, by George A. Jarvis of Brooklyn, moved thereto by gratitude to God for the goodness and mercy that had followed him all the days of his life, and impressed by a deep sense of the good which would, with God's blessing, grow out of an en- dowment for the encouragement of "the defence and confirmation of the Gospel" by godly and well-learned men. He named it after his former beloved pastor and ever-endeared friend, Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts. The Lecturer is appointed by the Dean of the General Theological Seminary, the Bishop of Massa- chusetts, the Bishop of Connecticut, and the Bishop of Long Island, and their successors in office, or such of them as may accept such trust, who are designated and constituted The Board of Appointment. He must be an ordained minister in good standing of this Church, or of some Church in communion with it; and shall deliver at such time and place as may be required a Course of Lecture Sermons, in number not less than four nor more than seven. And no previous Lecturer shall be eligible unless at least seven years shall have intervened between the two courses. The subjects of the Lectures are to be such as apper- tain to the defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Holy Bible and illustrated in the Book vi THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURESHIP of Common Prayer, against the varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious ; and also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atone- ment, Justification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such central facts as the Church's divine Order and Sacraments, her historical Reformation, and her rights and power as a pure and national Church. And other subjects may be chosen, if unanimously ap- proved by the Board of Appointment as being both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship. Under this appointment of the Board created by the trust, the Rev. Samuel Hart, D.D., Dean of Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Connecticut, delivered at the General Theological Seminary in New York the Lectures for the years 1915-16 contained in this volume. CONTENTS Lectuhe I PLAN AND PREPARATION PAGE 8 Prefatory; outUne •• The Church in the Divine Mind » I. The Dispensations— Covenants •.••,••• V" l' ." "J VV^f la 1. God's dealings with man sinless but imperfect 13 2 His dealings with man imperfect and smful . . 1* 3. His dealings including all mankind 15 n. The Church claims to have history J J 1. God's plan apart from sin ^^ 2. His plan to redeem *^ 3. Progress in spite of failures ^^ in 1. The plan before the ages • 24 2. The mystery of Christ-the Church necessary 26 8. Man's place in creation, and in the Church .... ^^6 IV 1. Preparation of and for the Son of God .... 27 2. Preparation of the Apostles ^ 3. Preparation of a Body for Christ o" v. 1. Preparation of and for the Spirit 81 2. Need of corporate action •••"•/ A 8. Unity of mankind through the Church »» Lectitbe II ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING I 1. The Church, the fifth Empire (Kingdom) ... 87 2. The relation of the four to the Hebrew covenant ',',.* V'j 8. The Church, introduced and estabbshed as a kingdom II 1. Founded on the Jewish election ** 2. Intended for growth and furnishing *» 8. Also a Catholic foundation *" CONTENTS PAOE III. 1. Its spontaneity 61 2. Much expected and much assured 64 3. Its life proves Itself 66 IV. The Church's endowments : 68 1. Continuity 68 2. Adaptability 69 3. Influence, based on Experience 60 V. 1. The Church's titles in the Creeds are ideals ... 62 2. The present meaning of each 64 8. Her declaration as to herself 67 Lecture III CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING A kingdom, body, building; Each implies purpose, ordering, progress 69 I. 1. Kingdom=realm 70 2. Ideas of Jewish theocracy and Roman common- wealth 73 8. Who rules and who are ruled 74 II. 1. The Body not revealed — not existent — at first 76 2. Needed by Christ for His action, for His life 77 8. For His progressive completion and His glory 80 III. 1. The Building, rooted and growing 81 2. Material brought for it 82 3. Always under rule for progress 84 IV. 1. The Church grew into organization 86 2. Uniformity of the result 87 8. Purpose and completion 89 V. 1. The necessity of the historic order 91 2. Which came by devolution; assurance of validity 98 8, 4. The historic episcopate; priesthood minis- terial 96 6, 6. Validity, how defined and proven 97 CONTENTS ix Lectxjbb IV LIFE AND MEMBERSHIP PAOE 1. The Church's life proves itself 101 2. The marks of that life 103 3. Its continuance 106 II. 1. The Church's growth in beauty and strength 106 2. Her youthfulness 109 3. Alone with her Head; her transfiguration .... 112 III. 1. Her life sacramental; that is, spiritual 113 2. Manifested as given and as received 115 3. The place of the sacraments and ordmances 117 IV. 1. Membership dependent on the life of Christ . . 119 2. Our relation to this through the Church 121 3. Who may admit to membership? 124 V. 1. Is there implicit membership, or kingdom-mem- bership? 127 2. Membership depends on relations and brmgs duties J28 8. Progress in membership within the covenant 129 Lecture V WORK AND RELATIONS I 1. The work of the Church to live, to be the Body of Christ 138 2. To call the world to the kingdom and to teach 185 8. To serve the world 138 II. 1. Disappointment at what the Church has done 189 2. Due in part to wrong expectations 142 3. The world is better for the Church 145 III. 1. A sphere for the world outside that of the Church l^J 2. Ecclesiocracv intolerable 149 8. But the Church may teach the State 150 IV. 1. The revelation of truth to men; the need of study I'^l CONTENTS PAOK 2, That of Duty, in law and in practice, through conscience 158 8. That of Worship, corresponding to the worship above 154 The present urgency of the Church's work; the need of Christ's Headship 165 1. A great influence and power 156 2. Because of it, the Communion of Saints 157 3. All working towards an ideal — which is better than reaching it 168 Lecture VI THE FUTURE, THE BRIDE AND THE KINGDOM I. 1. The Church actually living, with history and promise of perpetuity 160 2. Imperfection due to finiteness and to weakness 161 3. The right and the wrong discontent 161 II. 1. Our Anglican position: the quadrilateral ... 164 2. Our hopes in this dispensation 168 3. Our dangers and our encouragement 169 III. 1. Duty of separation from the world 174 2. The world the field for God's truth and grace 176 8. Possibility of declension; a remnant to be saved 177 IV. 1. The growth of the Kingdom 178 2. Its future, after this dispensation 180 8. The nations governed by the Kingdom; restraint 182 V. 1. The Lord waiting for the Church, His Bride 184 2. The Church's after-duty to the kingdom and the nations 186 8. The blessedness of that age; our part in the great unity 187 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH Lecture I PLAN AND PREPARATION Ephesians i. 9, 10. kotA rijv eiSoKlay airod ^v irpoidero iv avrip eh olKOVoiilav rov ir\r)pd)fMTOs Tuv KatpQv. "According to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him, to result in a dispensation marked by the completion of the appointed times." I MAY be allowed to begin this course of the Paddock Lectures, the thirty-fifth in appoint- ment, though I think it has not so high a num- ber in actual delivery, by paying a tribute of respect to the memory of the Founder, of the man whose name the foundation bears, and of the first Lecturer, whom the founder chose and to whom he suggested his topic. Mr. Jarvis was a good example of the typical layman, and in nothing more so than in his desire to assist in "the defence and confirmation of the Gospel." Bishop Benjamin Paddock was for me in my youth an ideal of the graceful writer and faith- ful pastor. Bishop John Williams was for all of us more — if I may so say — than an ideal; he was worthy to teach because he knew, and we 3 4 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH learned from him because from a student he had become a scholar; and there was nothing which he knew more thoroughly or of which he spoke more wisely than of the English Refor- mation. To follow such men is an honor and an inspiration. I have set before me as the general subject of this course of lectures The Church's Doctrine of the Church, or The Church's Witness to Herself. I do not forget that the Greatest of Teachers said that if He bore witness to Himself His witness was not true; and further, that a proof that the Spirit Whom He would send to His disciples would have the power to lead them in (or into) all the truth would be that He should not speak from Himself. But in thus excluding the origination of truth from any divine teacher — and therefore implicitly from any human teacher, whether an individual or an organism — our Lord did not mean that no teacher was to present his credentials or to declare the authority by which he should speak. He Himself appealed to the Father's authority as bringing a message from Him, and aflBrmed that the cause for which He had come into the world was that He might bear witness to the truth; and He promised that the Spirit, receiving of that which was His, would show it unto those whom He should call. In this sense the Church of God, the PLAN AND PREPARATION 6 Spirit-bearing body of the Incarnate Son, bears witness. And we can ask of her — nay, she bids us learn from her — what are the great truths with which she has been intrusted and which it is her province to teach, what are the lines of duty which she must enforce by precept and example, and what is her relation to Christ her Head and to the world which is rightly His Kingdom. As an ambassador, she brings her credentials; they are not the source of her authority, but they define and prove her au- thority; and to them she appeals in that wit- ness to herself of which I purpose to speak, telhng of her plan, her foundation, her consti- tution, her membership, her work, her destined future. The Church's credentials are primarily in the Scriptures of the New Testament, those now ancient oracles of God and utterances of His Spirit, which, to say the least, assure us that in the great drama of man's world, while there is progress and development, there can be no in- troduction of new forces and principles : Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum. In the Church's history we may read, if we are wise and patient, the philosophy of the teaching of the written word; and the appli- cation of sound reason will not only confirm it, but will also give it the perspective which helps 6 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH the student to distinguish things that differ. Yet that witness which we are to consider must be sought not in the sacred writings of the earhest days alone, but in the divinely guided life and the no less divinely guided thought of the Church. It is no easy question, to interro- gate the Church as to herself; it requires an attuned ear to catch the accents of her testi- mony and a prepared soul to apprehend its meaning. But you will agree with me, I am sure, that it is worth our while both to ask our questions and to listen for a reply; and in this confidence I am asking you to study with me the Church's Witness to Herself. The topic is indeed limited, and will keep us from many excursions into which our path might easily be turned; but it is no narrow aspect of truth and duty and hope on which we can look, if only our steps are orderly guided. In this first Lecture, therefore, after briefly opening the whole subject, I shall ask you to study what the Church through her prophets and teachers tells us of the divine plan and purpose which in the ages before the Incarnation were making preparation for her; how in lines direct and indirect, of general and of special training, man was bidden to make ready and God was making ready a Body for His Son when He should be sent into the world to take upon Him the nature of man that man might be PLAN AND PREPARATION 7 perfected. Next, we shall inquire into the Es- tablishment of the Church, its beginnings and what followed immediately on its beginnings, and its Furnishing, especially with the gift of the Spirit sent by the glorified Son of Man; and we shall seek to learn somewhat of the continuance of that gift, its power of adaptation, and its varied use in the Church's varying and widening experience. It will belong to us, in the third place, to study the Constitution and Ordering of the Church, made known to us as the Body, the Temple, the City or World-Empire, of Christ; and to ask as to the principles involved in the provision which He has made for its good order and for the continuance and permanence of its regimen and government. We shall look then at the Church's Life, its nature and its power, its proof and its application, with the means by which it communicates that Life, as coming to it from Christ, to its members in that most real of all ways which we call sacramental; and we must consider the fact and the test and the proof of men's membership in the body of Christ by participation in its life. Next, we shall try to learn the lesson of the Church's work and of her relation to the World of men, for whose sake the Son of God was incarnate and to whom He offers through the Church the benefits of His redemption; and we shall hope for the courage to look without conceit and 8 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH without despair at the hopes and fears which guide us and sober us as we undertake our part in that work. And finally we shall seek to gain some idea of the great and universal Kingdom of God — to which indeed our thoughts will have often turned in our progress thus far — and to look into what is revealed as to the Future of the Church in that which remains of this present age and after the consummation of this age, and (if God shall therefor open the eyes of our hearts and our minds) to direct our vision to the great Consummation when Christ — the Christ perfected in His Church — shall be all and in all. It is with a feeling of profound humility that I open before myself and before you, my fathers and brothers in learning and in study, a scheme, which, because it is so vast, must needs be im- perfectly handled. I shall hope rather to offer suggestions than to instruct, and I shall leave it to your charity to fill out that which can be presented but in outline and sometimes to bring to your minds some truth complementary to that which I am seeking to present. I shall take my texts from St. Paul's wondrous words in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephe- sians, words which were the lofty but neces- sarily restrained utterance of thoughts on which his great mind had dwelt as, after wonderful experience, he sought to tell the Church that which had been made known to him of the PLAN AND PREPARATION 9 meaning of God's revelation of Christ. They are not easily understood in their expression or in the truth which they seek to express; but they will repay study; and to the inspiration which gave utterance to them and which they awaken in us I must trust in large part to supply my imperfections of utterance and of thought. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give unto us a spirit of wis- dom and revelation in full knowledge of Him, that we may know the hope of His caUing, the riches of His inheritance, and the exceed- ing greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.* Amen. Let us turn our thoughts then this evening to God's good pleasure which He purposed in His Son that He might bring about a dispen- sation which should mark and belong to the completion of the appointed epochs — for thus we may venture to render, with a kind of rough accuracy, the words of the text. The great Apostle, when he dictated these words, did not hesitate to lay before those who should read or hear them the convictions which had been borne in upon his mind by long and careful study. He had known Christ, since the •Ephesians L 17-19. 10 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH day when on the Damascus road he had given himself up to be known of Christ; and from that time on he had no longer lived his own life, but Christ had lived in him. Yet it needed the varied experience of years filled with active labor and discussion and persecution to show him what it meant to follow Christ; and then it needed the years when at Csesarea and at Rome he was kept from activity in service and shielded from persecution to enable him to learn how it was possible, yea necessary, for Christ to be all in all to him; how the God of his fathers was first really made known to him in the glorified Jesus when in Him he found the Lord of his life; how all the earlier orderings of God's gracious will had had for their purpose to make preparation for Him and for a company of men who having His life should be His body. The result of all this thought — he called it a revelation — he sought to express in the former part of the writing which bears for us the title To the Ephesians. Those to whom it came had not had all his experience and were not en- dowed with all his powers of insight and of expression; nor can we, the inheritors of the faith and the learning of the ages, hope to enter into the fulness of his vision of the plans and purposes of the eternal Father for the mani- festation of His Son or to understand the full meaning of the words in which he sought to PLAN AND PREPARATION 11 direct the vision of his disciples. But as we pass on we are convinced that the facts of the revelation, of the revealed mystery, are such that they prove a divine plan, a divine guid- ance, a divine issue. And as we begin to trace the preparation which in history the God of history was making for His Son and for the body of His elect, we turn our words into wor- ship and our thoughts into reverence as we are bidden to remember that in it all, or as we are almost forced to say back of it all, there was and there is the Father's good pleasure which He purposed in His Son. The Son Himself, we may say reverently and with the apparent sanction of His own words, must needs have been prepared, sanctified, consecrated, that He might be sent into God's world,* whether to bring its progressive virtue and holiness to perfection or to call it back from sin into a relation to God in which it would recognize vir- tue and holiness as a not impossible ideal. And certainly, whether actual sin was to enter into a world the nature of which involved its pos- sibility or was to be repelled by the unfailing choice and following of righteousness, man would need to be prepared for the fulfilment in him of God's great purpose. Times, ages, epochs, edu- cative and disciplinary with possibilities of pro- gress, must come and pass; dispensations, ar- • St John X. 86. 12 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH ranged plans each with its methods and its adaptations, must follow one another; God, deal- ing with man whom He had made in His own image that man might grow into His likeness, must be Himself under the " divine necessity " of teaching man rightly to value that image and desire that likeness, long though the process of learning and of teaching must be. And when the times should be completed, the varied epochs should have passed, and the fulfilment should be awaited, a new dispensation, plan, ordering of events for God and for men, was to be brought in. That the times had been fulfilled Christ proclaimed when He began His ministry;* that the times had been fulfilled was believed by the pious souls who were as with prophetic vision waiting then for the redemption and visitation of God's people; that the times had been fulfilled the Apostle's mind and his soul were convinced when he saw what the Father had purposed in the Son and what the Son was accomphshing for the Father, the beginning and the promise and, in sure anticipation, the perfection of the Church. But we must recall ourselves from the present thought of these lofty truths to ask what we learn, in Scripture or elsewhere, as to the mani- festation of God's plan in the working of the earlier dispensations. • St. Mark L 15. PLAN AND PREPARATION 13 1. These dispensations, the Hmits of which are fairly defined for us in the Old Testament, are marked by covenants, and may almost be them- selves called covenants. They disclose methods of God's deahngs with mankind and with men, each starting with a relationship recognized or brought into existence, each implying the obli- gations of such relationship, and each bringing a moral power to bear for the quickening con- tinuance of the relationship. We can know Kttle of man's state before the fall, when though necessarily imperfect he remained sinless, except by denying the faults and evil tendencies which we must attribute to the fall; but we may feel sure that God's dealings with man in the time of his innocency must have had to do with wor- ship and truth and duty. Standing in the pres- ence of God, in true humility indeed but without the sense of shame, man must have bowed in homage with the recognition of God's greatness and of his own dependence on Him; making Himself known to man, God must have revealed to him somewhat of the great truths which underlay the blessed relations in which they stood, the one to the other; thus acknowledging and recognizing God, man could not fail to learn and to confess the duty of being and of growing to be like God. That first covenant, to which I think we may say that all the wondrous de- velopment led which had its issue in man at 14 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH his beginning — that first covenant was marked by man's worship of God, God's impartation of truth to man, the recognition of the duty of man to God and (may it not be reverently added?) the duty of God to man. 2. But when actual sin, the choice of moral evil, and with it the inclination to sin, entered into the world of man, the covenant became a covenant of mercy, and the prime purpose of the dispensation was restoration. We do not dare to say that sin and the need of restora- tion was a part of God's plan; we do know that it was His good purpose that man having sinned should not be left to himself; we may venture to affirm, with some of the most sober theologians, that in creation there was the prom- ise of redemption if (or perhaps when) redemption should be necessary. At any rate, into this plan or covenant of restoration, of setting right, of justification, there entered — perhaps I had better said, in this covenant there were con- tinued — duty and truth and worship. I have changed the order, for it would seem that the obligation of duty was now felt as foremost and most imperative; but there followed upon it the attractive revelation of truth, attractive even when its aspect is stern and its lessons are hard in their application, and the call to worship, itself also attractive even when worship must ' PLAN AND PREPARATION 15 begin with repentance and be based upon it. The principles of the covenant remained: God would have man recognize Him, listen to Him, obey Him; and in the acknowledgment of God's restoring mercy, His pity and His patience, man was bidden to enter into the covenant which led to redemption. 3. Thus all the world of man had a place in this covenant; it was in fact as in intention a universal dispensation. But within it — and we can see in part how this furthered the divine plan for all — God made an election. He chose first a man, head of the most important family in the world of that time, the great monotheist, whose faith, that is to say recognition and prac- tical acknowledgment of God, has been a pattern and an inspiration for forty centuries of be- lieving men; then a family among that man's descendants; then a nation which sprang from that family; and with the man, the family, the nation. He made a covenant of election. The primarily evident purpose of this election was privilege, but privilege as involving responsi- bility, and that in the lines of which we have been speaking: the elect were given a more ready access to God in worship, a clearer reve- lation of Him in the knowledge of truth, a more distinct instruction in duty, than had been granted to mankind as a whole. We do not 16 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH need to prove that this was possible or that, speaking generally, it distinguished the election from those who remained under the universal covenant. Of course, it would be easy to point out examples of men who were not included in the Hebrew or Jewish election who yet had wonderfully clear visions of duty and truth and whose lives were guided by a consciousness of God and of His presence with them; and the writings of their own prophets and historians abound in confessions of the failure of men within the election to learn and to be and to do that to which they were called and to which they were pledged. Still, the greater privilege and the greater responsibility were within the congregation or body of beheving men who were chosen by God out of mankind; and this meant that they were put under a special training — we may call it a discipline or a dispensation — as the son of the family is trained more strictly, because more lovingly, than the attendants and the slaves of the household. The universal covenant was not abrogated; the law irapua^XOtv, to use St. Paul's word; * it came in by way of parenthesis, not interfering with the revelation in God's great utterance whereby He was teach- ing and guiding all mankind, but putting into it, for those who received this, another aspect of revelation, another note accordant with that • Romans v. 20. PLAN AND PREPARATION 17 which had been sounded with an added har- mony and a new power. For the chosen family and nation, the lessons of the covenant were held in suspense till a special revelation could be made; the purpose being that the former reve- lation should in this way gain in significance and in power, till in an amplified form it might again be offered to all mankind. I do not for- get that the great Apostle, when he introduces this figure of the Law as a parenthesis, gives as its purpose "that the transgression might abound"; but the sternness of the term really emphasizes both the need and the eflBcacy of the act; for the law made it impossible for God's people to disobey Him without knowing that they were sinning; impossible, that is to say, to weaken and defile their characters with- out at least a warning that they were incurring defilement and losing strength. It is not a lesson which at first commends itself even to us; but a little thought as to what our moral condi- tion is when we find ourselves becoming habitual sinners, even in some one line of thought or act, without knowing that the thought or act is sinful — this, I say, fully justifies the inter- position of a special dispensation to show that sin is transgression and thus to call man back from it. Put St. Paul's words into the positive form — for sin and transgression are negations, real and mighty indeed, but negations — and he 18 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH tells us that the purpose of the election, the special covenant, was that righteousness might utter its great imperative and insist on being heard; for the law was the teacher of right- eousness. But the purpose of the law as a parenthesis was not only or even chiefly to strengthen and benefit those to whom it was given. The elec- tion was not that the elect should be better or wiser or holier than others; if this had been its purpose, we should almost be forced to confess it a failure. No; they were given privileges and laden with responsibihties, that others might be better for their opportunities and for the use which they made of them. As the few great poets and artists of the world have been given powers of discernment and expression, not to gratify themselves, but to quicken the mental and spiritual powers of the multitude; as the few great philosophers have been granted visions of truth, not that they may find in them their own happiness, but that they may tell of the harmony and beauty which they know and persuade us of its reality and its power; as to scholars in varied paths of knowledge there come convictions of wisdom, which mean nothing unless the scholars become teachers and lead others along the path of understanding; so God gives to His elect lessons of duty, revelations of truth, calls to worship, that by reason of them PLAN AND PREPARATION 19 all men to whom His covenant extends may be better, wiser, more holy. And the Church is the heir of the election that she may become the heir of the covenant. A preparation was making for her in the Jewish Church or con- gregation; but when this parenthetical prepara- tion came to an end, she could take up the sentence of the universal revelation and carry on the universal covenant. To anticipate a phrase which must presently be used and enlarged upon, the Christian Body is the Church of Christ, destined to be the Kingdom of God. In extension the Kingdom is the greater; but, for this dispensa- tion at least, the Church has the greater intension. II In some such way as this the Christian Church claims, not only to have been historically pre- pared for, but to have had a preliminary history reaching back to the time of man's creation. Its existence is the fulfilment of a purpose, and of a purpose of the ages which include and (in a sense) precede time. That purpose was the good pleasure of the Father which He purposed in His Son, to result in a dispensation that should be marked by the completion and ful- filment of the periods and epochs which should lead up to it. 1. It was, therefore, a purpose not dependent upon sin or upon the need of redemption from 20 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH sin. It involved the Incarnation of the Son, that He should take upon Him the nature of man, not of necessity to redeem him, but of necessity to bring him to perfection. It involved that stupendous act, which yet was the most natural of all acts, by which God and man were brought together "in one Person never to be divided." On the divine side, if one may so say, there was the Son by timeless generation begotten of the Father, looking indeed towards Him the Source of His Deity, but able also to reach to that creation to which the Father was to give through Him a life derived from His; and there was also at his very first beginning man, made in God's image with the possibiHty of attaining to His likeness, able to look up to Him, nay able — of this there can be no doubt, because we know that it has taken place — able to receive the divine and to prepare to be taken into the divine. The truth of the Father's two impartations of life, the one to His Son, the other to His creation, distinct yet complementary, leads to the truth of the Incarnation; and on the fact of the Incarnation depend the purpose, the reason, the fact of the Church. Even apart from sin, man would need to be prepared by that normal training which we call development for the entrance of his nature into the Person of the Son of God; even apart from sin there would needs be the contribution of one fixed PLAN AND PREPARATION 21 epoch after another till all their purposes were fulfilled and the novus ordo saeclorum should be ushered in; even apart from sin the Incarnation must await its time, and the Church, its ex- pression, must tarry till the period of the order of its dispensation had come. Thus much at least, and doubtless more into which we can but dimly look, is taught us by St. Paul's words which he learned by revelation: Creation was with the purpose of incarnation, Incarnation was with the purpose of making mankind the dwelling- place of the Spirit, the Church of the Son, the Kingdom of the Father. 2. To this we must certainly hold, and the thought of this must He back of all that we shall hereafter think or confess of the Church's place in God's great world. But, of God's patient love for man and to His glory, the great plan was not turned aside — we cannot say that it was not hindered — by man's sin. Nay rather, the very means by which sinless man was to be brought to perfection were made to serve for man's reclamation and restoration. The Son of God, not changed — for that were impossible — in Himself or in that which He could offer to man; man, changed indeed, but without utter loss of the divine image, able to recognize God's revelation in the Son, to apprehend it, and to desire it; God still calhng to man as His crea- 22 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH tion and His child, and man still able to hear His voice and never quite unwilling to be guided by it; God demanding His own — for this is the underlying thought of the Hebrew word which deceives us when from the Greek or the Latin we translate it ' redeem ' — God claiming His own and offering defence and strength, and man accepting deliverance and in measure turning it into victory; this it is which marks that changed process from a normal to an abnormal revelation which now distinguishes the record of human history in its Godward relations. The Christian Church bids us thus to read the history of the ages which passed before her organization as the Christian Church, and to see how from the lawgivers, the prophets, and the priests of the earlier covenant and of the earlier election there came ever more strict and helpful lessons of duty, more clear revelations of truth, the opportunity of nearer approach to God in prayer and in worship. Thus for sinful man the way was made ready against the time of the dispensation in in which we now live. 3. And we are bold to affirm that those cen- turies of waiting and of preparation were cen- turies of progress. We read the records of the life of God's people in the Old Testament, we search the annals of the nations on the pages of the world's history, and we seem to find PLAN AND PREPARATION 23 failure written at the end of almost every chapter and to read of ruin as the result of almost every- thing that man, no matter what his impulse and his guidance, has undertaken. But, strange as to our unaided gaze it seems, the history of ages and of generations did make ready the way for the Son of God. The fulness, the com- pletion, of the epochs, did come; and the Son of God did by Incarnation come into the world which He had made and which He was waiting to redeem and to lead on to its perfection. " A people was prepared for the Lord"; at least sufficiently prepared to receive the germ of newly revealed truth and newly communicated life. Had all God's truth and love. His manifested justice and mercy. His urgent patience and patient waiting, but led to the expectant faith of the few simple-hearted men and women who believed that the time was well-nigh fulfilled and looked for redemption in Israel as close at hand.f^* and was this the result, the adequate result, of all past history? The restoration of prophecy, which went not out as of old to a listen- ing nation, but was heard by a few chosen ones in the house of a priest at the time of the circumcision of his son f — was this the pro- clamation of a new age? The outburst of con- fident hope from the pen of the most rehgious of ethnic poets J — was this the response of the • Luke ii. 25, 88. f Luke i. 67. jVirgU, Eclogue iv. 24 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH nations to the revelation of Israel's King? Surely, God seeth not as man seeth; it was enough, after so long a time, that so many were ready; their faith and hope were mighty enough to introduce the great change in the world; the new dispensation was marked by the completion of the old; they who knew and beheld and wor- shipped and obeyed — and waited — these made it possible for the nation and the world to hear the proclamation which told of a great fulfil- ment and a great beginning. Ill 1. Thus in the early ages we find the pre- paration for the Church. It was directly by way of election, ecclesiastical election, if one may so distinguish it from the individual predestina- tion with which we are apt to confuse it; and yet an election which was within a wide covenant, and which indeed belonged to that covenant. The nation of the tabernacle, the temple, the synagogue, " to which belonged the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of a law and the divine worship and the promises and whose were the fathers" was it "from which according to the flesh came the Christ," even the Christ Who is over all.* In it all were called, and in it were found those who were chosen and faithful. The preparation was also * Romans ix. 4, 5. PLAN AND PREPARATION 26 in a less direct way — so at least it seemed — among the nations in whom God never left Himself without the witness of providence, of history, of law, of moral and spiritual enlightenment, of faith and hope, of gifts of grace. Here too were those who were waiting for the light, in their way called and chosen and faithful; and into their heritage, as well as into that of the nation, the Church was to enter. 2. For, as St. Paul tells us in the Epistle some of the opening words of which have been directing our thoughts, the Mystery of Christ, the great truth revealed in Him and from Him, the great secret always true yet not made clearly known until He had come, was that the nations (toi eOvt]) should have the same inheritance, be members of the same body, and partake of the same promise as those who called themselves and were the people (o \a6<;). The Church was necessary, that is, for the completion of the history of all mankind; and if the career of one people had been more evidently directed than that of other nations, it was that those others might, when the time was fulfilled, re- ceive the benefits and blessings which had been held in store for them. The Church was ne- cessary in itself, that the Son of God might have as His body an organization of men beheving in Him; it was necessary in the history of man 26 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH imperfect, that the members of that body might find in it the perfecting power and grace of Him who was its Head; it was necessary in the history of man weakened by sin, that man brought into that body might receive the germ of a cleansing and strengthening Kfe, to be nourished in him unto the eternal Hfe of the Incarnate Son. The Church, then, in the great reahty of the divine plan and of the thought of God is not only, as we have all been taught, before the Churches; it is before the individual and the individuals; they are for it and it is not for them, as really as they are for Christ and not Christ for them. The mystery is the fact; the truth last revealed and still in revela- tion is the eternal verity, the cause and the end of all other revelation in the great scheme of the universe. 3. For as man stands at the head of creation in God's great order and oeconomy (dispensa- tion) and is not really himself until he is actually as well as virtually creation's head, so the Church is the true and destined head and summation of man, and Christ is the only Head of the Church; "and the Head of Christ is God." "From Him and by means of Him and with reference to Him are all things " — " is the uni- verse." * The Incarnate Son was not complete * Romans xL 86. PLAN AND PREPARATION 27 as the Incarnate until He entered into the glory of the Father; but He still waits till He with His body subject Himself unto the Father who shall have subjected all things unto Him; the Church can attain her perfection only in the life of her Head; mankind can be made perfect only by entering into — nay, rather, by becoming — the Church; no man is or can be brought to his possible and destined perfection save as a member of the body of Christ. The Incarnate Son in His present glory is the One Obedient, the One Revealer, the One Worshipper; in His life we render acceptable service, in His wisdom we learn lessons of truth, in His ever offered sacrifice we enter into the presence of the Father. And this is possible for us, because we are mem- bers of His body and therefore in Him. TV 1. We cannot lay too great emphasis on the importance, God-ward and man-ward, of the preparation for the coming of the Son of God by Incarnation into the world of man and for the foundation of His Church. Even after He had come. He made preparation for the Church. It was not enough that He hved a blameless life as boy and youth and young man; it was not enough that He spoke words of truth and did works of healing and showed his power over the world of nature and of man; it was not 28 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH enough that multitudes came to Him to hear and to be healed and to wonder whether perhaps He were the promised Messiah. He must have a body of men bound to Him by personal alle- giance, learning to vmderstand Him, and pre- paring to enter into His very life. We call the years of His ministry His public life; and as compared with the years of His dwelhng in Nazareth, it was a life among men and in the sight of men. But its most significant mark is that it was for Him and for a little band of chosen followers a time of momentous prepara- tion. He was preparing Himself for all that was involved in becoming and proving Himself the sinless Head of sinful humanity, for the Humilia- tion and the Passion and the Death, the Resurrec- tion and the Ascension, the Expecting and the Return; He was preparing Himself to be the Head over all things to the Church. It mattered little what the crowd said of Him, that He was Elijah or Jeremiah or John Baptist come to life again; but when the Twelve confessed Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, then, as with the expression of a great hope fulfilled. He could declare that He was about to build on the rock of faith a Church for Himself and that that Church — that elected body — should have such vigor that the citadel of death should fall before it. The Transfiguration followed soon after Peter's confession and the Lord's acknow- PLAN AND PREPARATION 29 ledgment and promise; then the humanity of Christ was shown to have reached, as He was a man, its perfection, and His true home was made known as no longer on earth but with God. But He veiled His glory and came back to the life which had to do with sorrow and conflict and death, because though He was prepared for personal salvation He was not yet prepared to be the Saviour of mankind, the Head of the Church of the redeemed. For this, the only way was through death and resurrection; His ascension must be from Olivet and not from Tabor or Hermon. 2. The Apostles also needed to be prepared, and with them that inner body of disciples who "companied with them all the time that the Lord went in and out among them." They needed to continue with Him in His tempta- tions; to witness His dedication of Himself to death and hear the promise of His return; to bear the strain — under which indeed most of them fell for the moment — of His defeat; to know, as before they could not know, the truth of His victory as shown in His new life; and then to hsten to Him as, in words which they could never forget, during the great Forty Days He spoke of the things that had to do with the Kingdom of God, for service in which He com- missioned and instructed them. It is well worth 80 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH our while to study the results of this prepara- tion, not only in the characters of the leaders of the early Church, and in their recorded words as they began to preach the Gospel, but also in the successive steps in which they began the work and effected the organization and directed the worship of the Church; but on this study we cannot enter now. Suffice it to note, that having received the promised gift of the Spirit, they spoke and acted with all confidence, as men under authority and entrusted with au- thority. " They dreamed not of a transitory house, who thus did build." 3. Our Lord, then, while He was with His disciples on earth before and after His resur- rection, was not merely instructing those whom He found most willing to hear, or training a chosen few that they might presently be His representatives to witness to Him and transmit His message to others. He was preparing for Himself a Body, into which He might infuse His own life after that life had been glorified and made transmissible, even as — so the early writers read the parable — in the first creation God formed man from that which He had al- ready made and then breathed into him the breath, the spirit, of life. Of this gift of the Spirit we must speak presently. But before passing on let us note that the purpose of the PLAN AND PREPARATION 31 living body of the first man and that of the second Adam was that each in his way might act in and upon the world. The breath of life was given to the natural (the psychical) man that he might by his labor bring the material world into subjection and exliibit at once its usefulness and its beauty. The spiritual Man received the Divine Spirit for His body of ran- somed and believing men, that it might work upon the world of human souls and bring them into the aptitude and readiness of service; that mankind in Christ and through His Spirit might learn and exercise its power of allegiance and obedience, and might thus attain to that ripeness and beauty of character which can come to it from no other source. The Spirit was given to the Church that the world might receive from the Church the fruits of the Spirit. 1. It remains that we note in this lecture the preparation for the Church which is especially due to the Holy Spirit of God. Perhaps we may even venture to speak of the preparation of the Third Person of the blessed Trinity for His work in the accomplishment of God's great pur- pose, as we have learned that the Word, the Second Person in the Godhead, was prepared for His Incarnation and His mediatorial work. For 32 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH certainly the Holy Spirit of the present dis- pensation (oeconomy) is the Spirit of the Father as He has been given, and has given Himself, to the Incarnate Son. The Father has sent Him indeed, but has sent Him in the Son's name; and in the Church He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus. The breath of life was such as the body could receive; it was adapted to the body, even as the structure of the body was such that it could be animated by nought else than the eternal Spirit. And there is some- thing in the command to wait for the promise of the Father, and in the ten daj^s' delay, and in the record that the Spirit did come when the day of Pentecost was approaching a fulfilment,* that shows us a great act of which some part was wrought in the silence of God. 2. And the need that God's time should be awaited, that the Apostles and their companions, full though they were of zeal, should find that the day had not quite come when they could testify of their living Master, emphasizes the truth that their work and their service was to be corporate. Their duty could not be satisfied b individual allegiance, strong though their faith was and earnest their devotion. The strengthening and directing grace of which they felt the need could not be given to any soul • Acts ii. 1 : ^1* r(f (rvyK\rjpovff0ai. PLAN AND PREPARATION 33 which kept itself apart from the others. The gift must be corporate, all must be "with one accord in one place"; the members of the one body could alone receive the gift which was sent to the one body; the obedience must be con- current, the teaching identical, the worship with one mind and one voice. Pentecost was the birth-day— rather, if we may use the word, the life-day— of the Christian Church, never an in- fant, but endowed with the attractive vigor of eternal youth ; upon a body its gifts were poured out, and upon a body were laid its responsi- bilities. The world, in spite of its age-long divisions, had a sort of unity, both external and internal; the Church had, and was ever to have, an essential unity, for which she was prepared and which was confirmed to her by the one Spirit. 3. And by virtue of this preparation and this action the unity of mankind is to be sought and awaited in the Church of God. For the world was made for the Church, and the Church is one because God is one. The dreams of one Empire have inspired men of the world, in older dispensations and in our own, to force the nations into a semblance of unity, which has always been far from "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of the peace"; and such empire neither God nor man nor history can tolerate. But the 34 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH Church, according to the good pleasure of the Father, is the one Body of His incarnate Son, the Temple of His one Spirit; and for this reason she is the great unifying power of mankind; for this she has been prepared; and, please God, the preparation shall have its full result, "even before the sons of men." Thus the study of God's plan of the Church and His preparation for it in history and in grace has led us into a wide range of thought. We have seen its connection with the universal covenant of old, and with the election which came in and partly modified it; we have traced in outline the history which led up to it; we have seen that in it is the great revelation of Christ for mankind; we have marked how the Lord's ministry, not only before but also after His resurrection, had to do with the Church which He had gathered in germ; and we have noted its relation to the Spirit of God and the Spirit's relation to it. And thus we have done some- thing to prepare the way for the testimony which the Church bears to the manner of her establishment and of her furnishing for life and work, at which we shall look in the next Lecture. What has been said will not have been spoken in vain if it has helped us a little to accept in their full meaning St. Paul's great words, that PLAN AND PREPARATION 35 the preparation for the Church was "according to the good pleasure of the Father which He purposed in His Son, to result in a dispensation marked by the completion of the appointed times." Lecture II ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING Ephesians i. 12, els T(f elvat rj/ids eU eTratroj' 86^r)s avrov toi>s irpoTjXiriKdres iv T(f XpiffTtfi. "To result in our being for praise of His glory — we [I mean] who have been the first to hope in Christ." At the close of the preceding Lecture, attention was called to the fact, familiar enough but not always remembered, that man's plans for uni- versal empire have always ended in failure. Quite apart from the consideration that, except in the past four centuries, would-be conquerors have known but a part of the earth's surface and have been ignorant of millions of their possible subjects, no rulers or peoples have for any long time undertaken to govern all men of whom they have known. Yet the vision of world empire has been before men from the day of Nimrod to our own day. And, what- ever else it has meant, it has been a witness to belief in the solidarity, or at 1 ast the possible unity, of the human race; to a confidence that all nations may be brought into something 36 ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 37 more than a federation, perhaps we may say a commonwealth. The behef in the possibihty of Empire — and that means one empire, for the word really admits of no plural — has its value in our study of what men have done and have planned to do. 1. This thought of Empire, or universal King- dom, meets us in different parts of the Old Testament. Psalmists and prophets, either in times of victory and material prosperity or in times when they would rouse their countrymen from the discouragement that came from weak- ness and defeat, sang and wrote of Israel as des- tined to rule over all the earth, exacting tribute from all other nations, subjecting them to right- eous laws, and enforcing upon them homage to the one true God. And as the panorama of history was unrolled before the eyes of later writers and they began to have visions of the unity of the past with the future, they saw and described under varying figures four great world- empires, each mighty in its way, some fallen and but memories, and others existent or close at hand.* Babylon had stood out in majesty with wondrous symbols which even to-day awe those who behold them; she had been mighty in all the world of which she knew or which had known of her; but Babylon had fallen. Persia with the •Daniel u., vii. 38 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH help of Media had gathered huge armies, had prevailed over her neighbors, and had marched for the conquest of lands of which her predecessor had hardly known; and its great bear-like power had come to an end. Greece, the people of poetry and art and patriotism, had been turned into a world-war army moving with swiftness against the east out of which former conquerors had come; and suddenly the arm of the great leader had been broken and his power scattered for petty quarrels and a laughing-stock to men. And the power which was rising in the penin- sula still further west, dreadful and cruel and ex- ceeding strong — as to this the seers had no doubt that it too was destined to destruction. Israel was assured that his God, the rightful God of the earth, would tolerate no world-empire; and that, though He might suffer it to rise, it would only be that the crash of its fall might be the louder and its ruin more irretrievable. Grandeur, vigor, progress, strength, each in its turn had failed or was failing as an enduring basis of dominion. The meaning of Babylon's and of Persia's attempts had perhaps been forgotten; but the beauty of Greek philosophj^ and poetry and the fitness of the Greek language to express man's noblest and loftiest thoughts had survived the failure of Alexander's conquests; and soon the strong hand of Roman law and the net- work of Roman roads was to hold the world in ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 39 one great system of administration. In the one case, however, beauty was degenerating into sensuousness, and in the other law was destined to be a cloak for injustice; the cruelty of the first empire was to be reproduced in the fourth. The thought of those to whom the tidings of the Gospel were first to come and by whom its message was first to be received had been largely affected by the visions of Daniel and of later seers; they were waiting for a great world- change. 2. For they were sure of the rise of a fifth empire, the symbol of which was not an image graven by art and man's device nor a beast rising out of the troubled sea of human struggles and passions, but a stone cut out of the moun- tain without hands or One hke unto a son of Man to whom the Ancient of Days should give eternal dominion. And this empire — I use this word rather than kingdom, as having for us the greater and more exclusive meaning, though presently it will be necessary to come to the literal translation of the Hebrew and the Greek, and speak of the kingdom of God — this empire was to have an absolute moral power and to be, in this and in other ways dependent on it, di- verse from those which had gone before it or were surviving at its foundation or perhaps we should say its manifestation. The preliminary 40 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH dispensation of Judaism had in itself, as has been well pointed out, the essential principle of righteousness which was needed to balance the attractive quality of Greek beauty and the stern property of Roman law; and had one but risen who could use it aright, it might have been expected to exert with these a mighty influence far reaching in space and in time. But even this, which may have been in the mind of the greatest man of the age, would not have been the Empire of God. Its possibilities were God-given; its facilities by way of preparation would have been of great benefit to man; but it could never have lifted itself up to full alle- giance to the God for whose manifestation the world was, for the more part unconsciously, waiting. Yet as the power of Greece had not sud- denly ended, to be succeeded at once by the fully developed power of Rome, so the influence of the world empires did not suddenly cease before the revelation of a completely furnished kingdom of God. In no history, whether we call it profane or sacred, in no development or progress, whether we call it natural or provi- dential, are there to be seen such breaks or cataclysms, the sudden and utter cessation of one principle or power or method of action and the sudden substitution of another full- grown in its place. Rome had started on its ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 41 way to be a world-power before Greece had faced and checked the ambition of Persia; the pohtical power of Greece did not end till a short century before the decline of Rome began, while her influence in matters of art and of intellect continued and in a very real sense continues to-day. So also the power and authority of Rome were strong for many a year after that new kingdom had been founded to which it was destined ultimately to give way; and its empire, which seemed to fall in the fifth century of our era and again in the fifteenth and yet again when the nineteenth century had turned in the midst of its course, has a sort of survival in the image of the nondescript beast which to-day claims to exercise somewhat of its authority. The truth is that, for good and for evil, we are the heirs of all the ages: and that into the fifth Empire, there ought to come all the true "honor and glory of the nations" belonging to the earlier times or surviving from them; and also that while it has its place on earth — while, as St. Augustine said, non adhiic regnat hoc regnum — it must contend with the survival of much which in them was dishonorable and inglorious. The new kingdom is not of earth, but it is on earth; and though it comes from above, yet the prep- aration for it was here below. The Church of God is a kingdom of men and among men. 42 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 3. And the Church was actually and em- phatically introduced among men as an empire, the kingdom of prophecy and of hope, the in- heritor of all that was good, the corrector of all that was evil, the fulfilment of all that was im- perfect, in the former empires. It belonged to — it was — the filling-up of the appointed times. As such it was heralded by the angel who an- nounced the Incarnation: As to the Child who shall be born, "the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." Thus the forerunner of the Lord proclaimed: " The kingdom of heaven hath come near at hand." Thus the Lord Himself presently made proclamation of Himself: "The appointed time hath been filled up, and the kingdom of God hath come near." * And this was not the lan- guage of those who were, as we may say, building upon the old and carrying on the phrases of the former dispensation into that which was open- ing before men. St. Paul, after his ministry was well advanced, described it to the elders of Ephesus, distinctly a Greek city, by saying that he had gone among them " preaching the king- dom"; and later yet he wrote to the Christians at Colossse, another Greek city of the province of Asia, that God had '* delivered His people • Luke i. 38; Matthew iii. 2; Mark i. 16. ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 43 from the power of darkness and translated them into the kingdom of His Son." * The Church from the first, with clear reference to the visions of the Old Testament, yet with strong empha- sis upon a contrast between that which belonged to the order of the world and that which came from God and belonged exclusively to Him, was and was to be a kingdom, a universal kingdom, the empire of the ages. The word, which liter- ally (as I have noted) is represented by 'king- dom,' means far more than one among the many kingdoms, some petty and some important, of which we read in these latter days. The Greeks used (SamXtia as representing the su- preme power of the Roman Emperor, while ' Imperator ' was in early Christian times an honorary term of military distinction: an apostle wrote of the /Sao-tXcus as supreme, the historian of the apostles gives the Emperor the courtesy title of Se/SacTTos, ' Augustus.' t We can hardly speak of the Empire of God, without seeming to bring in the id^a of arbitrary power; and the phrase Kingdom of God, to which we prob- ably must hold, seems rather to have lost the significance which it had on the lips of those who first used it in the Christian sense. It betokens absolute sovereignty, but with that moral quality which bars all that is arbitrary; ♦Acts XX. 25; Colossians i. 18. fl. Peter ii. 18; Acts xxv. 26. 44 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH it is not in our American sense the ' ' Republic of God," but there enters into it our conception of the Commonwealth of God; in one way it takes its place with the imperfect empires of old, while it leads to the perfection of that glorious City which needs no sanctuary and no palace, because the Lord God all-sovereign is its sanctuary and its royal abode, and with Him the Lamb victorious as priest and king for a people itself priestly and royal — Gloriosissima Dei Civitas. II 1. For this Kingdom, as we have already noted, a preparation was made and a foundation laid in the Jewish election. In this election, Christ the Incarnate Son of God stood, and this it was His purpose and design to fulfil. A study of the words which were used to describe that election, and which passed over into the phrase- ology of the Christian organization, will help us to see the closeness and the meaning of the connection of the new with that which was passing away. The words, it needs not be said, were Hebrew words; but they were applied to the Church in Greek words which had already a more or less distinct connotation of their own; and translated into our tongue at a much later day, they have brought to us a nomen- clature which partly is interpretative and partly calls for interpretation. We may say, in our ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 45 English vocabulary, that the Church of God received from the Jewish election that it should be God's calling, God's flock, and God's people. As to the word Church itself, it so exactly rep- resents to any one who knows Greek or Latin the word cKKX-qaia, ecclesia, and it borrows so many of its adjectives from these New Testa- ment words, that it requires an effort to remind ourselves that it is but a substitute for them and has by derivation an utterly different mean- ing from theirs. 'Church,' 'kyriak,' is indeed a Greek word in its origin ; but it means ' that which belongs to the Lord,' and it was the name of the building in which Christians assembled for worship before it was applied to the company or body of men who assembled in it; only after our ancestors became Christians did they know of the one Church, the united body of those who worshipped in the Churches. But ecclesia represented quite distinctly, as even its sound recalled, the gathered assembly of old; each ecclesia was the company of men who were bidden to come for a special purpose to a designated place of meeting. It had in Greek a well-estab- lished meaning before it passed into the trans- lation of the Old Testament and long before it was taken into the vocabulary of Christianity. It meant in the republics of Greece, especially Athens, and in the so-called free cities of the Roman world, such as was Ephesus, the called 46 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH assembly of the whole body of citizens, bidden to come together for some public duty, generally to hear and to determine on some course of action. The preposition « in the word has nothing to do, I am sure, with the choice of part of the men in Athens or Ephesus, those namely who were citizens as by a kind of arbitrary election, while others were practically bidden to stay at home; those who were not called were the sojourners and the slaves, and no man belonging to either of these classes would have imagined that he was either called to attend in the agora or the theatre or told to stay without; it was a call to all who were really men, citizens and voters, a universal call. One wonders whether to-day those who speak Greek or any of the Romance languages which are our modern Latin, have a different thought, consciously or sub-consciously, in their minds when in one form or another they say ecclesia, from that which the Englishman or the Scotchman or the German has when he says 'Church' or 'kirk' or 'kirche.' Ask your- selves sometimes whether 'ecclesia' or 'church,' 'assembly' or 'building,' comes first to your mind when the subject of these Lectures strikes your eyes or your ears; whether they are two words of different meaning which by habit or by efiFort of thought we make practically synony- mous, or whether each is a proper noun desig- nating something which you well know without ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 47 defining it. For our present purpose, we shall try to remember that ' Church ' represents to us 'ecclesia' and signifies the 'called' of God. It is superfluous to add that this is the word commonly used in the New Testament for the body of men of which we are speaking. Fairly common in the Hebrew, but often ap- plied to other companies than those of God's people, is a word properly meaning a company assembled by appointment or acting concertedly; it has for its Greek equivalent o-waywyT/ and in English is represented by ' flock.' But in the period between the Old Testament and the New ' synagogue ' had come to mean a place in which a local congregation could assemble for prayer and instruction, in no way a substitute for the one Temple, but in a sense a " house of God in the land." Of this kind were all the synagogues of which we read in the Gospels and the Acts; once only, and that in the Epistle of the Bishop of Jerusalem, the " Wisdom of James the Just," is a Christian place of assembly called a synagogue.* Yet the thought of the Hebrew word for which this stood passed over into the Christian Church; and, doubtless from memories of the words of psalmists and prophets and of the Lord Himself, the Church was called the flock of God. But perhaps more specially notable is the use * James ii 2. 48 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH of the word Xao's, ' people ' or ' folk/ for the Church of God in type and fulfilment. The Hebrew word, I venture to think, grew rather slowly into a theocratic sense; but there is a clear distinction between the singular and the plural of the noun, the people of God and the peoples of the world, and still more between the word itself and the word which we render 'nations' or 'gentiles.' In the Greek Xaos is a word of honor and dignity quite beyond that which appears in c^vos; the latter is rather divisive, and is read often in the plural, while the former is like a proper noun and by reason of its special application stands oftenest in the singular number. It has a closely human ap- plication to the men of God's calling and of His pasture as they stand in a personal relation to Him; they are His people, of His own possession, nay, of His own household. All these titles belong to the Christian Church, as it is the calling, the flock, the folk of Him whose name it bears. 2. This the Church claims for herself. And as in her life she proves or fails to prove this claim, her work stands or falls. Her foundation, speaking externally, was that which was estab- lished and proved and settled of old. By a calling — in the biblical sense of the word, an election — by a gathering together, by the fra- ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 49 ming of a common life, there was ready for the Church a foundation, a history, a cause of action. Neglect and failure had shaken the foundation, marred the history, turned the lofty ambition into discouragement; the condition of the Jewish Church and Commonwealth when the Son of God came to claim it for the beginning of His Church was far different from its heaven-revealed ideal, the pattern shown its great lawgiver in the mount, far different from that for which the earlier prophets had hoped and which the eyes of the later prophets saw in vision. Yet the wisdom with which the holy house had been builded, the understanding by which it had been established, the knowledge which had filled its hidden chambers with precious things, had not been spent in vain. Aspiration for worship, preparedness for truth, consecration for duty — these had never been utterly despised or neg- lected; and perhaps — if one may venture to measure great things to which external tests may not be applied — perhaps there was the more of all these because they were held by the few who really cared for them and cherished them. The foundation perhaps was buried, that it might support the great structure that should rise upon it. 3. But the Church not only grew from the election of old; it has not its foundation in 50 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH Judaism alone. Its life — for we must mix our metaphors as St. Paul did, and speak of a grow- ing building and a rooted foundation — its life came also from the ancient covenant, and in its very origin it was a Catholic Church. The nations, as well as the people, had been pre- paring for it; Babylon and Egypt, Persia and Greece, Roman and Parthian had all uncon- sciously shaped the world's life, opened the world's sores, lifted the world's hopes, that the Son of God become Man might satisfy the world's needs and fulfil the world's possibilities of good. The Church has always proclaimed, from the moment when she entered into her consciousness of life and power, that it was for her to take up and confirm the universal covenant of old; and the apostles, preaching this truth, declared the unity of mankind in Christ and for Christ. Christ as the Head of the Church, the Church as the body of Christ, went back past the paren- thesis of the law; and now, this having served its purpose of explanation, the oracle of God was heard again speaking to all men, revealing to them all truth that could be taught, calling them to lofty acts of worship and therewith to the obedience of bravery and of patience. It is the Church's work " to illumine for all men what is the dispensation of the mystery which hath been from the ages hidden in the God who created the universe." ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 51 III 1. The narrative of the Gospels belongs in a way to the preparation for the Church and in a way to its establishment; it tells of the gathering and the preliminary fashioning of substance yet being imperfect and of the fitting of life which could be bestowed upon it. The book of the Acts of the Apostles contains the history of the birth of the Church and of its establishment first as the heir of the election and then as contin- uing and even expanding the covenant. Both in the Gospels and in the Acts the story is told very simply and with little argument or explana- tion. The evangelists recorded the words and the acts of a Person, of whose essential divinity and perfect humanity they were persuaded; and they did not need often to call attention to the fact that what was said and done in the life of ministry and of suffering and in the final vic- tory was beyond the range of the wonted power and experience of men. They knew Christ and believed in Christ, and they were writing for those who had been taught to know Him and believe in Him; and they wrote in a natural way of what they were assured was natural for Him, not as later critics might decide that they ought to have written with a view to ques- tions which unbelieving ingenuity might devise. So in the early chapters of the Acts, and to 52 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH some extent' throughout the book, we have the record of very remarkable events as told by those who took part in them and knew them to be remarkable and yet were persuaded that they were natural and to be expected under the cir- cumstances in which they took place. The Gospels tell us and then assume that the Son of God has come into the world; the book of the Acts tells us and then assumes that the Spirit of God has been bestowed upon the Church. It was in accord with the nature of the Incarnate Son that His life among men should be above men ; it was in accord with the nature of the Spirit sent from on high, the Spirit of the oeconomy, that His life in the Church should bestow and exercise and call forth powers such as had not been seen before. So it had always been; noth- ing could be simpler and at the same time more incomprehensible than the narrative of the crea- tion with which the Bible opens; and with scarce an exception the miracles of the Old Testament are, as one has said, natural miracles and not miracles of magic. In the New Testa- ment nothing is more really natural, very simple and without any suggestion of marvel or of wonder, than St. John's record of the events of the Resurrection morning; he wrote it, doubt- less, long after it occurred, when he had thought out its simplicity and its necessity; and its very quietness has a power of persuasion or of con- ESTABLISHINIENT AND FTONISHING 53 firmation which we specially feel when the Easter Gospel is read. But perhaps the most powerful illustration, because it has to do with the two- fold beginning of the new order, is to be seen in the writings of St. Luke. At the beginning of his Gospel he tells us of the coming of the Son in the Incarnation; and at the beginning of the Acts he tells us of the coming of the Spirit in what we may call the Inspiration. The Gospel narrative, cast in the model of the older Scrip- tures, first told in Hebrew with Hebrew hymns and all interestingly suggestive of the Mother's thought and voice, does not overcome us with wonder, but rather leads us with the Mother to keep all these things and ponder them in our hearts; these great acts, " done in the silence of God," and affecting His great universe, are told almost silently lest their power should be weak- ened by an attempt at interpretation or a call to wonder. The Incarnation was marked by a new gift of prophecy; but the music of the Bene- dictus and the Magnificat was that of worship so profound that it must be simply rehearsed and quietly offered. The Inspiration was marked by a new gift of life, and it showed itself indeed at first in an outburst of ecstatic utterance with strange sounds and acts; but these were pres- ently declared to be exactly what was to have been expected, and they led to the life of normal enthusiasm and quiet use of the Spirit's power 54 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH which belongs to an inspired Church. " To have a right judgment in all things and evermore to rejoice in the Spirit's holy comfort," that is to say, to be happy in having His strength — this it is to which Pentecost led, the key to the record of the history which followed. The foundation was on lines perfectly natural, because they were directed by a divine necessity. 2. In the power of the Spirit thus given and thus working, St. Peter and the rest of the first- called apostles, and presently St. Paul and those who with him extended the Apostolic college, carried on the work of the establishment and the furnishing of the Church. They ex- pected much, and much was expected of them; for they were conscious of the bestowal of power, and those among whom and for whom they worked were persuaded that they had the power of the Spirit's gifts and that they could bestow that power by the gift of the Spirit. Their authority came from that which they knew of the Lord's teaching about Himself and from His life made perfect from Himself through suffering and victory. As I have suggested before, we can gather from the record of their acts the substance and sometimes the details of the exposition of the older Scriptures as the Lord had opened them to the understandings of the disciples in the great forty days, the mean- ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 55 ing of the suffering and the glory and how each had its plan in the scheme of man's redemption. Two verses of the Psalms, we may be well assured, He expounded to them, and again and again the early preachers and those who followed dwelt on their meaning: " Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell, in the world of the dead "; * this taught the power of that holy life, so holy and so strong that, though brought into contact with death and for a moment yielding to it, it must overcome it; that the Incarnate one, even though He died, did still hve, and that with a life which must of very necessity be manifested: and " Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make thine enemies Thy footstool";! this "oracle of Jahweh to Adonai " was shown to be a proph- ecy of the Ascension and the Session and the Return, as the Church soon began to rehearse them in her Creed. Before the Resurrection these passages and others like them had but a vague meaning, and could serve only by way of suggestion, not as texts for great arguments of conviction; the Lord living in His new life could in that life show the significance and the mean- ing of the present truths which they then ex- pressed. Moreover, the great power of the Spirit, which could not appear — which could •Psalm xvi. 8-11; Acts ii. 25-28, xiii. 86. t Psalm ex. 1; Acts ii. 34, 35; I. Corinthians xv. 25; Ephesians i. 20; Colossians iii. 1; Hebrews i. 8, 18. 56 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH not be — until He should be sent by the ascended Christ, working in its pristine vigor, teaching all things, bringing to remembrance all that had been said in parables and explaining it, leading along the way in all truth — that power, so far surpassing all that had been shown in the time of preparation of which the Gospels speak, was moving the minds and hearts and souls of those to whom He had been given, and the Church was seen to be furnished with wondrous energy which was manifested in wondrous ways. The early Christians knew not the manner of its coming or of its operation, and for the more part they were not curious to search into it; only they knew it, they yielded themselves to it, they accepted it, it made them new men, and with the breath of a new life they were carried on by it, they spake with tongues and prophesied, they manifested wisdom and understanding, counsel and ghostly strength, knowledge and true godliness; while all was tempered and directed by God's holy fear. The new age proved itself to be the dispensation of the Spirit. 3. The proof, then, was in the verj' natural- ness of all this which was so new and wonderful. As the proof of the Resurrection-life laj' in the fact that the Lord was alive and was doing the deeds of life, so the proof of the Church's life did not submit itself to argument or demon- ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 57 stration, but was shown by the fact that the Church was ahve. This life of the Lord and of His Church, each (as we shall later see) comple- menting the other because neither can be complete in itself, is shown to us in its operation, histori- cally, theologically, practically, teleologically, in the book of the Acts, in the Apostolic Epistles, and in the Apocalypse. They do not know the living Christ, the Christ of the Church, with her worship and her theology, the Christ for whose return the Church is preparing and in whose return alone the Church and the world can find perfection, who do not read beyond the Gospels, even though the Gospels tell of the great victory and the entrance into glory. To know Christ aright we must know Him as revealed by the Spirit in the Church; and the record of that re- vealing is in those early monuments of faith and knowledge, of hope and experience, of les- sons of duty to be practised in love, which the Church has preserved in the records and the letters and the visions of men who stood close to the beginnings but had the inspiration of the future; a record transmitted to a new genera- tion through many witnesses, that they might commit it to faithful men who should be able to teach others also. The Church was furnished with the truth, and was made keeper and witness of that truth. 58 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH IV If we are asked to classify, in a practical way and with some reference to our present needs, the gifts which the Spirit bestowed upon the Church and which still remain with her, for her inward growth and for her duty of service, I should bring them under the three heads of Continuity and Adaptability and Experience. 1. She has and she must hold and prize that continuity which is a sure mark of all life. It is the historical continuity of a kingdom, the vital continuity of a body. Far more than a legal immortalitj^ though even this is not a fiction — I may be pardoned the paradox, but legal fic- tions are not fictitious, any more than parables are fictitious — not at all an immortality such as might be thought to come from a guarantee against corruption, it is a great and enduring and necessary fact. It is a continuity tested in many ways as any life may be tested; yet not proved by satisfying the tests that may be applied or by its reactions when stimulated from without, but manifested as life by doing the acts of life. A living body experiences changes of nearly every sort, except that of its vitality; and we are puzzled sometimes by those who question its identity, as some of the ancients questioned the identity of the good ship Argo, so often in the ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 59 course of centuries had her parts been repaired and replaced; but our conviction of fact over- comes what we call our logic, and we know that the continuity of life carries with it the assur- ance of the identity of mind and even of body. There is a life which can be traced, a life inex- plicable in the cause and the manner and often the purpose of its variations, but for that reason (we may venture to say) all the more real. Not corporeal, but corporate in this life, it is the action of a real body which has not called a soul into itself, but is alwaj^s in process of making by the action of its soul. In organization and in ac- tion, because in Spirit and in life, the Church has continuity. 2. But because hers is the continuity of a life, the Church has adaptability — an attribute or power, failing which the life is impaired and may be in danger of coming to an end. As the principles of a national life stand all the more strongly because their application is accommo- dated to the changes in times and usages and men's manners, as the consistency of a character proves itself more certainly and more profitably when it encounters a new diflSculty or is challenged by an unexpected crisis, as the real world, as well that of grace as that of providence or of nature, has no uniformity of expression or of demand, so the life of the Church shows the mani- 60 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH fold wisdom of the Spirit by its adaptability, its personal adaptability which at one time or an- other affects it in everything except the prin- ciple of its life. Thus the Church has remained visible in spite of the working of the powers of destruction which have set themselves in array against her; she has lost none of her attributes in spite of sin and division and narrowness and the temptation to novelty; she has the same person- ality, never utterly losing any power or laying down any authority or shirking any responsi- bility or forgetting her call to service with great humility; thus she has ever affected the world, while yet in her own true self the world has not affected her for harm. We often dread to concede to the Church, as a body or in some part of its action, this really divine and most neces- sary gift of adaptability ; rather we should cherish it and realize its value as a true mark of the operation of the Spirit. 3. This in a way shows the power that comes from the experience which, led by the Spirit, the Church gains and is taught to use. Out of this experience comes largely her ability to influence, and on her ability to influence depends her usefulness in the world of man. Continuity alone, as that of a Medo-Persian law, could give no real experience; exaggerated adaptability, s that of a Lesbian rule, could give no worthy ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 61 or helpful experience; continuity quickened by adaptation, adaptability controlled by contin- uance, these acting together give the power of corporate action in the use of experience, the practical carrying out of the lessons taught by life and learned from life. The Spirit in the Church both directs and attracts. And, if I mistake not, this is the real appeal of the via media, a phrase too apt to move a smile or to rouse a spirit of contempt. Ludicrous and con- temptible is a middle path which is chosen to avoid making a decision or to shirk responsibility or to give a meaningless but highsounding name. But to keep to a path carefully laid out as lead- ing to the desired end of a journey, to tread it with the persistency of a pilgrim in spite of at- tractions on the right hand and on the left, to keep in the middle path, not because it is in the middle, but because it is the path from which none but a foolish wayfarer would stray, this is to act wisely, to be rightly influenced and rightly to use experience. An application of this can be readily made to matters of worship, of teach- ing, and of obedience; in each there is a tendency to the rigidity of unvarying usage, and in each a tendency to seek adaptation to any passing phase of thought or imaginary need; the true balance is found when the Spirit teaches the les- son of experience. For so, to revert to the words which I read as my text, we may see how they 62 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH who were the first to hope in Christ lead us to praise that glory, that " manifestation of excel- lence," which is still manifested in the living body as it shows its diverse duties, powers and duties harmonized in experience, the gifts of the Spirit establishing and furnishing the body for the divine manifoldness of life. V It remains in this lecture that we look, though it must be briefly, at the titles which the Creeds give to the Church, as they help us to under- stand how it is that she is furnished for her own perfection and her service to mankind. 1. These titles of Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, Apostolicity, though confessedly necessary for the description of the Church in every age, yet in the fulness of their meaning belong to the Church in the perfection to which it has not yet attained. It may be affirmed indeed that in the earliest days of its history, when first the power of the Spirit was working in that little company which was joined with the Apostles through faith in Christ, the Church was ideally perfect; it was one and holy, catholic and apostolic. But while we readily grant the application of the first two adjectives, for they have a sort of negative reality, we should hesitate to use the other two at all strictly inasmuch as they con- ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 63 note attributes which speak of experience and growth. There is a true unity in that which has never been assailed by powers that lead to selfishness and division; and we may call that character holy which has the beauty of unassailed purity; and thus, as with the relative perfect- ness of childhood, the Church began as one and holy, its very innocence having in it the founda- tion of virtue. But catholicity and apostolicity — these, though included in the design of the Christian body, must be attained. To be fitted for all men in all places and at all times; to be the receptacle and the accredited messenger of all truth; to invite to itself and to find a use for the possibilities of every people and of each individual; this calls for training and the use of experience. And to do the work of apostles, to be ready to be sent and to go furnished for ambassage, to perfect and continue an organi- zation adapting it to varying needs, this belongs not to any nature however good at its beginning; it is for those who by reason of use have their powers and aptitudes exercised to discern and to act with judgment. Of all four of these titles the reahty and necessity consists in the fact that they are ideals; unity and holiness as marks of character and power must come from experience, and catholicity and apostolicity must be attained by the effort for the brave and patient carrying out of a principle. They all 64 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH belong to a living Church which is growing up in them and to them. It is easy to say, as we must in honesty say, that practically there has never been a time when the Church could be described by the four terms which we apply to it when we repeat the Creeds; and we cannot but grieve that " appearances are against us " when we make the aflBrmation of our faith. But we should be speaking in opposition to our convictions if we denied any one of these titles as real, as possible, as attainable, as aflSrming a real possession and declaring a definite duty of the Church. And when the foes of the Church bring against it and against its members the charge that in the body and in individuals there is a failure to reach that which is professed, they do at least bear witness to the loftiness and purity of the profession, and to the fact that the Church does not despair of herself or of her members or of mankind. 2. Thus in our Creeds we affirm the Church's principles and ideals and confident hope for her- self. If she cannot show numerical unity, she can at least declare that integrally she is and must be one; and she can declare that in the unity of the object of her worship, in the abso- lute agreement in the great doctrines which have to deal with the Godhead, the Incarnation of the Son, the life of the Spirit shown in the visible ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 65 Churcli, in the consent as to the existence of means of grace and the duty of using them, and as to the obHgation of the moral law, there is a unity which has more real power than have all the divisive forces which have wrought and still work such havoc and shame. If the history of the Church and of the world which the Church ought to direct is everywhere marred by sin, and even if (as some sober writers have said) the sins of Christians are more grievous than those of the heathen in past ages and in our own time, yet the Church is working for holi- ness and is a holy body, even as any of our universities is a learned bodj' though it contains many unlearned men and some with very inade- quate ideas of what learning really is; there is the holiness of dedication, of choice, of influence, the holiness of separation from evil, abhorrence of it, drawing back from it, the holiness of every effort for virtue and godliness of living, the holiness which must be fostered by every approach of the Holy Spirit to man and by every desire of man to seek that Holy Spirit's protection and inspiration. If the teaching of the Church is narrowed by some who insist that none shall see those aspects of truth which are not within the direct range of their eyes, and her extension is hindered by those who would convert men to their own national or individual traits and habits before pointing them to the Redeemer of all, 66 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH and the very name of Catholic is used by some in an exclusive sense, yet the great range of the truths of Christianity, their fundamental har- mony, their manifold application, all the proofs that the soul of man is naturally Christian and Churchly, teach us not to despair of catholicity. And again, though many of those who call them- selves Christians fail to follow the steps of the apostles and some make little of the importance of holding to the apostles' organization, still the Church as a whole does accept the obliga- tion of the apostles' teaching, does believe that she is sent with a message and a commission which has been handed down to her and which she must transmit to those who come after; and there are few who do not believe that there is a commissioned ministry from whose lips they expect to hear authorized lessons of truth and from whose hands they believe that they receive assured pledges of grace. In short, if in the world there is any power which works for unity beyond all other powers, any inspiration for holi- ness which stands forth pre-eminent above all others, any generosity of teaching and power of application which is specially fitted to deal with all truth and to bring a message to all men, any enduring organization which is a guarantee of continuity and a witness of authority, it is to be found in each case in the Church of Christ; the Church is endowed with unity and sane- ESTABLISHMENT AND FURNISHING 67 tity and catholicity and apostolicity and is pledged to them; whenever they are wanted they can be found in her, and from her endow- ment they can be drawn for all of man's spiritual needs. 3. As members of the Church we make these declarations as to her inherent character and the gifts which she can bestow. But when we stop to think of what they mean and what there is in the great body of Christians and in ourselves as believers correspondent to them, we are filled with shame. We are keeping the Church from being in her fulness what she is by dedica- tion and in possibility; we have not in us, as we ought to have, those qualities which we recognize as forming her ideal. Yet there is another side to all this, for the words are after all words of inspiration and of courage. If we really believe, as we say day by day that we do believe, that the Church of which we are members, established for our benefit, bringing to us the life of God, furnished with heavenly endowments, has these great attributes, these powers of a coming age, and if we are sure, as sure we must be through our belief in God, that they shall prevail in the world to which the Church and we in the Church must minister; then there is a mighty force which can move us and the world into harmony with the divine plan; then we, so far in time and 68 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH place separated from those who were the first to hope in Christ, shall like them be to the praise of the glory of Almighty God; and when His glory shall in us be revealed, we shall be glad also with exceeding joy. Lecture III CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING Ephesians i. 22, 28. T^ iKKXijalg,, rJTtj iffrlv rh ffw/xa dvToO, rb trXi^pu/Jia rod t4 irivra iv irdffiv irl^-qpovfjAvov. "[Head over the universe] for the Church, seeing that it is His body, the completion of Him Who is approachSig comple- tion universally in the universe." As we enter on the special study of the Con- stitution and Ordering of the Church, we must recall that the Church is represented in the New Testament under the three-fold figure of a kingdom, a body, and a building, these three figures being sometimes kept distinct and some- times treated as complementary or supplementary. Each, I think we may say, implies purpose and ordering and progress; perhaps the idea of design rather inheres in our thought of a kingdom, while the orderly arrangement of parts belongs more particularly to the body, and progress is better illustrated by the erection of a building. The study of each of these metaphors will help us in the inquiry which this evening we have before us. 70 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 1. Reminding ourselves that in the New Testa- ment the word ' Kingdom ' has rather the dig- nity and the exclusiveness of our word * Empire,' we are met at the outset with the question whether the kingdom of heaven or of God or of Christ means the ' reign ' or the ' realm ' of heaven or of God or of Christ. Does it refer, that is to say, to the act of ruling or to the sphere in which the rule is exercised? Are we declaring more distinctly that heaven or God or Christ is a king or that there is a kingdom in which heaven or God or Christ rules? Substitute 'empire' for 'kingdom,' and we are led at once to what I believe is the right answer. Our topic, as that of the forerunner and of the Lord and of His apostles, is the realm in which (or over which) there is a divine and rightful king; and we are strengthened in this definition of the term by considering that the phrases ' body of Christ,' 'house of God,' have to do with some- thing of which He is the head, something in which He dwells. Our study is further simplified if we accept the conclusion on which scholars seem to be well in agreement, that ' the kingdom of heaven ' means exactly the same as 'the kingdom of God.' The pious Jew who would not venture to pronounce the proper name of his God, but CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 71 substituted for it a word which we translate literally by 'Lord,' was not willing to use too freely the word 'God' itself; and for 'God' he was wont to substitute the word ' heaven,' as being God's abode and suggesting Him who dwells therein. (A like change, we may note, is often made by actors and readers, in the plays of Shakespeare and other writers of his time who used sacred names much more freely than we are willing to do.) ' The kingdom of heaven,' we may thus say, means ' the kingdom of God.' But does ' the kingdom of Christ ' in the usage of New Testament writers mean the same as 'the kingdom of God ' ? and is either of the phrases, or are both of them, intended to describe the Church? There is a difference, in thought at least, between the Church of Christ and the Church of God; the former would seem to denote more clearly the present, as we say actual, Church, and the latter the Church as it is to be, or (as we might call it) the ideal Church. Can we make this distinction in the double use of the word 'kingdom'.? Not always, I am sure; and we must remember that St. Paul once speaks of the " kingdom of Christ and God." * But in more careful phrase, when speaking theo- logically, the same apostle looks forward, after the resurrection of Christ as the first-fruits and that of them that are Christ's at His appearing, • Ephesians v. 6 ; tow xP'O'toC kuI deov. 72 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH and sees in the far future " the end" when, having brought to nought all adverse powers, " He shall deliver the kingdom to the God and Father." * There is evidently in his mind an end of the medi- atorial kingdom as such, even though the Son of God is to be ever the Mediator; the kingdom of Christ is to become, or to be merged in, or to find its new place in the kingdom of God. Perhaps the closing visions of the Apocalypse do not pierce as far into the future as do those which inspired the opening of the epistle to the Ephesians; but in them we see a kingdom of God greater than the city which is the Church. And therefore I cannot doubt that we are using scriptural language accurately when we call the Church of this dispensation the kingdom of Christ but reserve the term kingdom of God for that which is awaiting its full revelation in another age. Be this as it may, we should all confess that the Kingdom of God is not yet fully manifested, and that in the Church there is but a partial or preliminary manifestation of the kingdom. And here I may recall what was said in an earlier lecture on the distinction between the universal covenant and the later election, within the covenant indeed but in important ways differing from it. The Incarna- tion renewed and confirmed the original cove- nant, its action including all mankind and its * I. CoriniMans xv. 24. CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 73 benefits extending potentially to all; the Church first succeeded to the special election and in a way started from it; but it extended the lines of the election and presently opened its doors to those of every nation who should hear and accept its call. The Church, that is to say, is a covenant-election, universal in scope, and preparing for the fulfilment of a universal cove- nant. It may be that the meaning of all this, not fully revealed and not fully to be under- stood as yet, will be made clearer for us as we pass on. 2. Into the Church as an organization there came at a very early day the tradition of the Jewish synagogue and the influence of Roman law, the principles of a theocracy and those of a commonwealth. The Jewish tradition was of a renewed election; but the influence of a world- thought had entered into it, proselytes were by what we should call naturalization admitted into the nation and thus into the company of the elect; and before Christ came there was also a large body of men who feared God and in that fear wrought righteousness, " devout men out of every nation under heaven," * who were closely connected with the election and formed the nucleus of a kingdom. The Roman world had a central government, with its colonies and • Acts ii. 6. 74 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH dependencies and subject nations. The colonies were not like those of Greece, daughter states which had drawn their life from mother cities but had now their own households and were po- litically independent; they — the Roman colo- nies — were outposts of citizens on the borders of the empire, whose home and political rights were in the imperial city. St. Paul was a visitor in a free city when he was at Ephesus; but he was a Roman citizen when he was at Philippi, with the same rights which he had at Rome and under the same duty and privilege of deman ing and exercising them. And it was from the colony that he drew the lofty exhortation to a Chris- tian citizen's duty: "our home-city, ■^fiHv to TToXirevfia, is in heaven." * The Church entered into this preparation of the law and progress of the world-empire, as she took for her own the use of Roman roads and of the Greek language in its practically universal form, while she entered into the good results of the theocratic teaching of the Hebrew people. And this was a step, and more than a step, towards making the kingdom of the world to be the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. 3. Of this kingdom of the Church the Incar- nate Lord is King. The nature of His rule had been declared by holy men of old, who told of a reign of righteousness and holiness and love. *Acts xvi. 87; Philippians iii. 20. CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 76 It had the authority of the first-born, for was He not the head of mankind as being the First- born among many brethren? and is He not, because of this, for each of us the next of kin to represent our needs and maintain our cause? He is our guide and our shepherd, for a true shepherd is a real king, and Dominus regit me rightly represents ' ' The Lord is my shepherd.' ' He is the gentle guide and master, who has a boundless influence because He is among us as He that serveth. He is the example and inspira- tion of all the beatitudes and of none more strikingly than of that which has place in the Old Testament as in the New, " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land." * His followers, as well in His kindly rule as in the authority of His influence, are those who fulfil a ministry the very beauty and simplicity of which enforces the following of His character. And His subjects. His folk. His followers, are by rights all men; ultimately He will call all men to His obedience, as He seeks to call all men now; are we not almost bold enough to say that at the last all shall be His glad and willing subjects? "The Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord be one, and His Name one"; "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." t * Psalm xxxvii. 11; Matthew v. 5. t Zechariah xiv. 9 ; Philippians ii. 11. 76 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH II 1. But in the word 'kingdom' there is not implied everything which belongs to the relation between Christ and His Church. We cannot keep it from having an external and partly mechanical suggestion; it is after all a word of division. We find for it a complement, at least partial, in the phrase the Body of Christ. This use of the word did not originate indeed with any of the New Testament writers; but we certainly owe its distinct and full application to St. Paul. It is so constantly on our lips to-day and is applied to so many organizations or combinations of men for all sorts of work and pleasure, that it requires an effort for us to think how its first Christian use affected the minds of those who heard it. The thought must have grown in the apostle's soul; but its utterance had a wonderful power. Every one knew that a human being has a body; every believer knew that Jesus Christ lived in a body, that that body was put to death, and that it belonged to faith in Him to confess that as the risen one He possesses a body and is perfect Man. Believers in Christ, moreover, believed and were sure that there existed a Church of living men, each and all deriving spiritual life from Him. But to be told that this Church was really and truly Christ's Body to which He CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 77 stood in the relation of Head, this was a stupen- dous and startling declaration. How could an organization of men be a body? How could it be the body of even a glorified man? When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in declaring this truth he assumed it; and from it thus assumed he drew lessons which were needed in the distracted Church of Corinth and emphasized principles which are of unending application. When not many years later he wrote the epistles of the first captivity, he had meditated on this so great truth and knew somewhat more of the mystery of its declaration and its applica- tion. He knew now that Christ the glorified is the Head over all things to the Church. 2. Thus he has taught us, not only that the Church belongs to Christ, but that it is His Body, necessary for His completion, as really as He is necessary for its completion. It is less than this, though by no means a little matter, to say that the glorified Christ is revealed in and by the Church; and it is one function of a body that it shall make the person known and that the person may act by its means. The body without the spirit is dead; the spirit without the body is, in the present order of things, greatly limited in its expression; but the body of man is not needed for the spirit's life, as is evident from many well-known facts. The In- 78 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH carnate Son of God, the Man Christ Jesus, so we are taught, is not complete without His Body, the Church; He is completed or rather to be completed by it. This points to a part or aspect of truth which it is hard to state without seeming to deny other truth, namely, that there is a progress in the Incarnation dependent upon the progress in the human nature which the Son of God as- sumed. Its fulness is the union of perfect God with perfect man. The perfectness of the Godhead is absolute; but manhood is not perfect until, in a real human way yet apart from sin, it has passed through the stages of childhood and youth and opening manhood, having been at each tried by the trial peculiar to it. Nay, we see that even manhood is not in itself perfect; the Son of God must pass through the experiences of a fallen race — for such He came to redeem — must meet death and overcome it and in the glory of victory must return to the Father. He that ascended is the same Person who came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary; but He has carried to the right hand of the Father that humanity which He took, perfected by growth and trial and the varied experiences of life and by passing through death, marvellously enriched, and in His rela- tion to God — for we must not omit this — with a power of intercession great above all that CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 79 we can ask or think. But His humanity, so we are learning, was not perfect even at the ascen- sion and the session. His Body must be more than that in which He lived and suffered, died and rose again; His Body must be the living company of those who through His Spirit believe in Him and are inspired by His life; His Body must be the Church, the company of all the elect. When, ascending up on high, He gave His great gift to men in the marvellous beginning of the outpouring of the Spirit, His Church was born, its body men, its life the Holy Ghost. And now through the ages that body has had the ex- periences of childhood and youth and vigorous age — yes, and sometimes of an apparent decrepi- tude — and those not without sin, delaying the growth and weakening the power and hinder- ing the progress towards perfection. But this experience has been and is necessary that the Lord's Body shall reach its perfection, shall come to a full-growTi man, even to the measure of the stature of the fulness to which the Lord Himself has already attained. In this I think that we can in part see what is meant by the Lord's 'expecting,' by the necessity that He the Incarnate Son shall sit as King until He has put all enemies under His feet. And as He waits, the Church waits for her perfection, till every part and member being fully grown and furnished, the Incarnation shall be accomplished 80 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH in a perfect mystical body, and the Lord with His whole elect body completely furnished and co-operant shall be prepared to give to it its share with Himself in the new covenant in which all things shall be made His and fulfil His great purpose. 3. In the light of what has been said and sug- gested we may look at our text; a very literal translation will be awkward, but it will help us to find its meaning. And let me say that I have no doubt that the present participle •rrXripovfievov is either passive or a true middle. " God," St. Paul tells us, " set the risen and ascended Christ as Head over the universe for the Church; the Church, I say, seeing that it is His body, the completion of Him who is approaching completeness universally in the universe"; or we may paraphase a little with a recent commentator, and say, "who is moving towards a completeness absolute and all-inclu- sive." Christ, glorified in His own humanity, still needs completion; and His completion depends on the completion and perfectness of His Church, in which He is moving on to that perfectness of Himself which cannot otherwise be attained. In the light of these words read the history of the Church; in their light study its present condition; inquire into its aims and its designs; ask as to the loftiness of its worship, CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 81 the holiness and thoroughness of its revela- tions, the clearness of its teaching of duty; weigh in the scales of God's purposes the wishes and hopes which are leading the Church in a great part of her activity; compare that which we see or know or infer as to the desires of the members of the Church for her progress with the Lord's great desire for her spiritual perfec- tion and her fitness for yet greater growth and greater aptitudes; and say if we do as yet much better understand the ascended Lord than they understood Him among whom He walked in Galilee or in Judaea. But again see how the lofty ideal, often unexpressed and sometimes but partially understood, is transfiguring the lives of those who worship because they believe and who know the Incarnate Son as the Lord of their lives; whose hope is in His presence and in whom His body is approaching its perfection; and thank God for the life thus manifested and thus leading to the absolute completeness that shall be in His Son. Ill L But we must not forget that another metaphor under which the Church is sometimes described is that of a building. " Ye are," says the Apostle in this very wTiting, the thought of which we are seeking in some wise to follow, "built up upon the foundation of apostles and 82 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH prophets"; and presently he turns the figure from words descriptive of citizenship and of membership in a household to words that tell of a growing edifice; "ye are in process of building together into an habitation of God." * Also in another epistle, confusing his metaphors as it would seem by intention, he bids Christians to make sure that they have been rooted as a tree and are in process of being built up as an edifice in Christ. The temple grew in its erection, that it might be the home of the God to Whom men felt that their worship was due; the tree grows from that which its roots and its leaves take from the earth and the air; it needs to be firmly and wisely rooted that it may keep its place, and its leaves and its fruit are for pleasure and for sustenance. It teaches us the value and the necessity of that natural growth in which the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; and bids us trust Him Who though others plant and water yet Himself alone giveth the increase. 2. But in the erection of a building beams and stones are brought and made read}' for their position; sometimes, as in Solomon's temple, each being squared and cut to measure, so that it needs only to be lifted up and set in the destined place, and sometimes the rough material being hewed and cut on the site and with blows fitted • Ephesians ii. 20, 22. CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 83 into correspondence with what has been already built. It needs this other metaphor to fill out that of the kingdom and that of the body; for in it we are bidden to see that Christ accepts for His Church that which men may bring to it; whether its value be in itself great or little, yet if given to Him is it acceptable. Even hay and stubble may be of some use, perhaps for packing or to kindle fire, as St. Paul seems to say, as well as marbles and wood for the struc- ture or gold and silver for the adornment; some will endure and some will be used up, but each one who has brought anything will find that it has been accepted.* We may think of the contribution which divers ages one after another have brought to the temple of Christ, the simple teaching of apologists, the subtle arguments of philosophic theologians, the masters of disputes, the logical teachers, those who have looked deep into truth and those who have written of the wide extent of duty, those who have seen the need of reformation and those who have held back the deforming arm, those who have taught in books of wisdom and those whose lives have been an example and help; children, young men and maidens, men and women of vigorous years, the aged saints pausing on the verge of another land; each has brought something, each is bringing something which • I. Corinthians i. 12-15. 84 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH shall do honor as it declares the much variegated wisdom of God. And the purpose of it all is that God may dwell among His people; that as in cities and villages, where the abodes of men are prepared for companies and families and individuals, God has a house set apart for His own, that men may find Him there ani may never forget that He is not far from them, so the Church of God, the congregation of believing men, may be known to be among men and may challenge their loyalty and their dedication of themselves, of their work, and of their substance. 3. Thus, before passing on to consider the order and orderliness to which the Church witnesses as specially belonging to itself, we may sum up that which has been specially learned in study- ing its constitution. As it is a kingdom, it tells of law and duty and of the perfections of the King: as it is a body, it declares to us truth and reality and life, a life growing towards universal perfection; as it is a building, it reminds us of God's dwelling among His people and of our call to worship him. Duty, life, worship — each is exercised under rule, the rule of its nature because it is the law of perfection, a rule which, because it is perfect, must manifest itself in progress. CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 86 IV 1. But it belongs to us at this time to treat not only of the constituting, but also of the ordering of the Church. It is especially, as I think, in this ordering or orderliness or order that we are to look for the directing power of the Spirit, who is not only the Spirit of life and of vigor, but also the Spirit of order and of beauty. And order is a later gift than life, as true beauty depends on the operation of vigor in a well- framed body. We need not be at all surprised if we do not find it distinctly and universally shown till a time somewhat later than that of the New Testament. A kingdom may be securely founded before men know in what precise way it can be best administered; a body may be well shaped and harmonious before we can tell how its activities can be best directed; a building may be well designed before we can decide what care should be exercised for its maintenance and usefulness. All true order is due to growth, and growth is determined by many influences; all permanent order comes from that which was tentative and possibly thought to be temporary. And this is especially true in cases where experi- ence can give but little help, or where the lessons of experience are far-fetched and cannot be directly employed. But when the growth is healthy and orderly, then it is possible to trace 86 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH back the results to principles and powers which were in operation, and to see that the results, with the laws of future activity, could not have been other than they are. The critical period of the history of this country was the years between the close of the Revolution with the acknowledgment of the independence of thirteen colonies and the adoption of the Constitution of the Federal Union. The wisest of those who were responsible for shaping the polity and the policy of the country could not have intended or even foreseen more than the general principles of that Constitution; but looking back from its adoption we can see how it must have been in all important matters that which in point of fact it was and is. If such is the working of the minds of earnest men who feel their respon- sibility, we need not be surprised to find that in like manner the Spirit of God, working of neces- sity through men, guided the ordering of the Church. Its critical period, to use the familiar phrase, was from the time of the gift of the Spirit to the time when she found herself organ- ized throughout the world on the same plan and under the same form of what we may call mon-episcopal government. It is not only the re- sult, but the naturalness and absolute uniformity of the result, that convinces us of the Spirit's power and working. While the Apostles — those to whom for their work's sake we restrict the CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 87 name — were still active, with their practically universal mission and the honor of their im- mediate appointment by the Master, it was not possible to say what provision would be made for continuity or change when their work should cease. Perhaps St. James at Jerusalem had practically established a diocesan order, the episcopate to remain as long as possible with the kindred of the Lord; St, Paul in his old age commissioned at least two men to do quasi- apostolic duties and carry quasi-apostolic re- sponsibilities with the thought that these were to be continued; and we have a historic tradition, which only lacks canonical authority, that St. John, twenty years or more later, was guiding the Church of Asia Minor and from it the Christian world into the organization which it presently accepted as of the Spirit's ordering. There is no intimation that the Church of that early day was surprised to find herself Episcopal in her order. Perhaps at different places she would have traced back her organization in different ways to the Apostles and through them to the Master; but she seems to have felt per- fectly sure that she had been led by the Spirit and was in the path which the Spirit had marked out for her. 2. The result, as I said, was the same; and in point of fact, as we study the New Testament 88 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH closely, we can see that preparation was making for it in the time of the Acts and the Epistles, and that nothing else could naturally have taken up all into which apostles and apostolic men had been leading the Church in divers lands and countries. The suggestion of a " tunnel period," with the amount of material which we have at hand, not large indeed but varied and sufficiently clear in its testimony, cannot be seriously accepted. The roof has been taken off the tunnel, some light reaches the travellers and enables the by- standers to watch their progress, and the train comes out into a somewhat different landscape and moves on somewhat more rapidly in the same direction in which it was moving before. The Ignatian epistles show for the Churches of Asia the organized form of ministry in its earlier stages, of which we learn from at least two of the New Testament books; and, though less distinctly, we can see a like progress with a like result in other parts of the Christian world. And if all this was, as we are confident, the result of the Spirit's working, we shall not wonder that, with practically identical results, men's theories and explanations of it have not been every- where or at all times the same; we should rather expect that the exact definitions of titles and assignments of duties and limitations of powers could not always agree. The Church of the East considers the bishops as forming an order superior CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 89 to that of priests; the Church of Rome does not count them a separate order, while yet she restricts to them the power of ordination; at Carthage it was taught that each bishop is the successor of all the apostles; across the Mediter- ranean the emphasis was laid on one apostle as the source of authority. But the result, however effected in all the centuries of diversity of times, places, and men's manners, has been, as I said, the same; and it moves our wonder and confirms our faith in the guidance of the Spirit of Christ, that the power of varied life should have worked out, as if of very necessity, the same general system of Church adminis- tration throughout the world. Abnormalities doubtless there have been, some remaining from the early days, some arising from time to time; but they have not belonged to the body and they have been sloughed off with little or no diflBculty. 3. We may well pause here to recall in the Apostle's words what was the purpose for which the ascended Lord placed in His Church some to be apostles and some prophets and some evan- gelists and some pastors and teachers. (The words are in a lofty strain of poetry, but they do imply that at Ephesus, then the apostolic centre, there were four orders of ministers, the fourth including two distinct classes. A few 90 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH years later, in his practical epistle to Timothy, the Apostle puts the matter somewhat differ- ently, but we can see that the change was due to a perfectly healthy growth.) That purpose was not to train some men to places of honor and power, however worthy they might seem to be; it was not to bid others to be in subjection to them, however much they might need to practise obedience and endure restraint; it was with a view to the perfection of saints, and that unto a work of ministration, unto the build- ing up of the body of Christ; and its limit was to be, what to men seems the unattainable, how- ever much progress may be made towards it, until we all attain unto the unity of the faith and the perfect knowledge of the Son of God, unto a completely grown-up man, unto a measure of full age of that which fulfils Christ. The appointment of divers orders in the Church was then intended for the perfecting of the saints, of those who had been called to holiness and in whom some progress towards that holiness had been made; it was that apostles and prophets and others, however lofty their titles might sound, should do a work of subordinate service, " deacon's work," and should build up — for so reads the double metaphor — Christ's body; but their aim should be unity in belief in the Incar- nate Son and in real knowledge of Him, the growth of the Church, and imphedly of its sev- CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 91 eral members, unto full manhood, to that which can be measured by nought less than Christ's perfectness, because it is to be that by which the Incarnate One shall Himself be completed as the Head of the Church, of mankind, of the whole creation. Words like these, and doubt- less based on these, have been put on the lips of the Bishop at every Anglican ordination to the priesthood for more than three hundred and fifty years; they abide in the memory of some of us, they will reach others of us in the most solemn hour of our lives: *' Consider with yourselves the end of the Minis- try towards the children of God, towards the Spouse and Body of Christ; and see that ye never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion or for viciousness in life." It is a lofty exhortation; see to it, my young brothers, that you take it with all serious- ness. V There is very little question to-day among diligent readers of Holy Scripture and sacred authors that from the Apostles' time— or cer- 92 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH tainly from a time close following on the death of the last of the Twelve — there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. And not many scholars would doubt that this three-fold ministry in what is called the mon-episcopal form was thus early accepted by the Church because the Church believed that she was guided by the Spirit to accept it, and was continued in the Church be- cause the Church believed that it was the will of the Spirit to continue it. But in our time, a considerable part of believers in Christ in this land and in our mother-country and among other nations with which we have most to do, holding to the fact and the necessity of a Church and the duty of men to enter its membership, are not continuing what we call the Apostolic Ministry, some not acknowledging its necessitj^* others doubting its desirability, perhaps some, like Scottish Presbyterians of old, thinking it in direct (though long-continued) contravention of Christ's ordinance. We cannot avoid, then, putting to ourselves the question. Is the three- fold ministry of what we call Episcopal regimen a necessary part of the Church's historic order? Our answer here must be brief and briefly de- fended. 1. It is without doubt a question beset with diflBculties, at least in these parts of the world CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 93 and at this time. These diflSculties are theo- logical and historical and practical and personal; and some of them, though real, are not easily stated. We cannot argue with good men of non- episcopal bodies as if they were at this moment separating from the historic order of the Church; the order which some of them have is for them sufficiently historic and has for them a pre- sumption in its favor. Some there are who say that the separation of their spiritual ancestors from the historic order of the Church of western Christendom was due to the fact they were forced to make the choice between denying the ancient faith and withdrawing from the ancient organiza- tion. Some, without doubt, consider the whole question as to ministerial authority a matter of indifiFerence, and do not believe that the Church of the sixteenth century can be bound by the decisions and practices of the fourth century or even of the first. The question calls for much patience and carefulness in an- swering. 2. The fact of the case is that the Church found itself Episcopal and accepted that fact as God's ordering through the Spirit. ' Episcopal,' if they used the word, or at any rate their equiva- lent for the word, did not mean exactly the same thing at every place and in every age, as we have already confessed. And that which 94 THE WITNESS OF THE CHIT^CH it did denote changed from time to time by some kind of a development directed by powers, political and personal, from without; and this development was thought of or treated as a divinely directed growth. But while there may be a development in the externals of the ministry of the Church, the ministry is not in itself an evolution, a growth upward, a change from the homogenous to the heterogenous: it is a devolu- tion, a handing down of authority and duty from the one Source of authority and duty. Christians did not in the very earliest days elect or even decide to recognize the apostles; nor did they a httle later authorize chosen men among themselves to be the elders of their congrega- tions and to minister to them in the Word and the Sacraments; they nominated, indeed, at the call of apostles, or devout men feeling that they were moved by the Holy Ghost offered themselves for sacred service; but it was apostles or apostoHc men who laid hands on them, bestowed on them the Spirit in His special gifts for their oflSce, and gave them their ' character ' with all that it implies. The principle on which any other than the historic order is based, apart from the consideration of absolute necessity, is the earthly principle of evolution; this belongs to a large part of creation and a large part of God's dealings with men, but is it inapplicable to the things of the Spirit. They are the glorified Lord's CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 95 gifts in their fulness; He gave some to be apostles at the first; those whom He had trained indeed in a very special way and made vessels meet for His service, but who were then sent by Him even as He Himself had been sanctified and then sent into the world. And all ministerial- priesthood authority in the Church must come in the self -same way from the Apostles by descent; men do not grow up to it; it comes not from the Body, but from the Head. And herein we may see, I think, the serious error of those who do not look for that authority, fully though they may believe that God bids them offer themselves for it, in the line of descent to which the historic Church holds. 3. Some will ask very seriously whether that can be held to be binding or of obligation, which is not expressly contained in the Scriptures, and cannot be proved by the Scriptures alone, but is learned from the experience of the Church in early apostolic times. I think that this con- sideration does make entirely tenable either of two ways of stating the doctrine of the historic episcopate: the one — which I may be allowed to say is my own conviction — that the order for which the Church of the New Testament age prepared the way and which followed uni- versally at the close of that age was the matter of a true revelation from the Spirit and should 96 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH be received as such; the other, that while there is not that proof of the divine origin of the Epis- copate which we have (let us say) of the deity of Christ, it was yet given to the Church to see at a very early day that this is the best form of her organization and that it is as such destined for continuance. Either statement fully recog- nizes the Spirit's authority and the Church's obligation at first to accept and after that to con- tinue it. 4. And in this matter the possibility of change — not, of course, of the modification of external accessories — is greater than the possibility of failure. What has failed, and has led to dis- astrous results the evil of which cannot be cured for centuries to come, has been the demand on the one hand that ministry shall not be priestly and on the other hand that priesthood shall not condescend to be ministerial. Those who insist that the true pastor cannot be the dispenser of grace through appointed ordinances, that there is such power in the ministry of the Word that the Sacraments are stripped of any special power, who do not see that the great need of mediatorship is in all life and that in all life provision is made for it, and that the whole scheme of redemption, the whole purpose of the Church, demands it in its highest measure — for them the thought and even the mention of CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 97 priesthood is repellent. And those who have acted as if priesthood meant the privilege of arrogance and of absolute use of power, as if it were an excuse for neglect of the pastoral and prophetic duties, as if it set a man over the Church as an overseer instead of in the Church as a watchman, they have done much to make the thought and the mention of priesthood an offence to God's people. Neither of these finds excuse in the life and teaching of the great Priest and Bishop and Pastor; the faults of neither should be charged to a system which by example and precept is guarded against it; the history of the Church shows how^ the helpful men, the Christlike men, the men from whom the Spirit goes forth are those who are pastors and priests, who are conscious that they bear the Lord's authority and forget not that they must use it for humble ministration to His people. 5. The question then is put to us, Is no minis- tration of Word or Sacrament valid, unless it comes from one who has the succession of the historic episcopate.'^ We may, without offence, allow that there has always been a place for lay- preaching in the Church; the question of lay- baptism w^e may leave until the next lecture; and the question then becomes. Can no one ex- cept a priest ordained by a bishop in the his- toric succession pronounce a valid absolution 98 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH or celebrate a valid eucharist? The word ' valid ' troubles us; to the legal mind of the West it has come to imply that that to which it is applied is the only means or channel by which it is possible to receive the desired spiritual gift; and then the rigid masters of law have seen a way to save the law and avoid its strictness by con- tending that an action evidently irregular may not be inefficacious or 'invalid.' To the thought of the Eastern Christians, if I understand aright, there is no real difference between ' valid ' and * regular'; everything irregular is also 'invalid'; but they find in the Church a power of oeconomy, by which it can make up for defects in the manner or the substance of intended official acts. Either of these but complicates the question, and makes the puzzle harder to solve. But take the sensible definition that that is * valid ' which has the authority of the covenant, and our duty of action, necessarily guided by our conviction of the covenant, is perfectly plain. It is not for us to say what God may give to those who in faith seek His grace in ways which the historic Church does not find provided in the covenant which she has accepted. Not arrogantly, but confidently, she asks for the old paths; and she finds rest for the souls of her people. Thus I do not hesitate to say, and to wit- ness as that which I read of the Church's testi- mony to herself in this matter, that neither CONSTITUTION AND ORDERING 99 the Church in her entirety, nor any part of the Church which would keep in full communion with the Catholic Church of the earliest days, is duly furnished for truth and grace without the historic episcopate, the three-fold ministry derived by bishops from the Apostles. We have of necessity traversed a wide range of theology as we have this evening studied in some detail the Constitution and Ordering of the Church of Christ. At least let it have been of this service to us, that we have been reminded that the Church is really the Body of the Incarnate Lord in His glory, and that in her He is even yet moving towards absolute completeness: and that the purpose of the ordering of the Church is that it may be possible for her— wondrous truth!— to hasten and accomplish His perfection. Lecture IV LIFE AND MEMBERSHIP Ephesians i. 13, 14. ^i*