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‘And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.’
Eph_1:22-23
I. The idea of the Church is absolutely vital.—The Church of God is no mere convenient machinery for spreading the truth; the Church of God is no mere creation of a later age—the dream of some ecclesiastical minds in the Middle Ages. The Church of Christ is part of the Gospel. The Christian conception of salvation is not that of a series of isolated units, each purchasing its own individual safety, but it is salvation in the body; it is salvation under the limitations of the sacred fellowship; it is salvation in the Divine society; it is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
II. This idea of the Church is threatened in our own day and generation from at least three separate quarters.
(a) It is threatened, first of all, by all that wealth of idea, for much of which we can heartily give thanks to God, that is associated with the rebound of thought from the materialism which dominated the middle period of the Victorian era. Now we have rushed into the opposite extreme of spiritualism, or into the extreme of the spiritual view of things. There has grown up along with this, quite logically, a kind of depreciation of the material; and even in certain Christian circles there has been developed an almost morbid hatred of outward form or organisation. One of the great leaders of modern thought in this connection has told us that we are to look for the Christ outside the ‘Churches.’ Can you imagine St. Paul speaking in that way? ‘Looking for the Christ outside the Churches!’ Why, the Church is the body, the fullness of Him Who all in all is being fulfilled. And the message of our Blessed Lord to the material world emphatically is not the depreciation of the body, not the depreciation of the outward, not the depreciation of the material. Wherever you find that idea, you can almost certainly trace the note of heresy.
(b) It is threatened from the point of view of those who dream that the religion of the Early Christians approached in character the simplicity of the Quaker. But here in this Epistle from which I have quoted is clear evidence of what the early Christians believed. While certainly not earlier than a.d. 59, it is also certainly not later than a.d. 70. In it we have clearly revealed the whole idea, the majestic, the stupendous idea of the Church of Christ as present to the mind of the Apostle St. Paul.
(c) It is also threatened from a third point of view, which is peculiar to our own day, and which has been largely evolved through the disunion of Christians in England. Statesmen, instead of frankly recognising the denominational principle as a good thing in itself, have attempted to create what is called a ‘common Christianity’—that is, the thinly attenuated residuum of religion after everything has been removed distinctive of any denomination; so we get that which Mr. Gladstone called ‘a moral monster’; we get the spectre of undenominationalism. We Churchmen are bound to maintain that there shall be no kind or sort of acceptance of a common Christianity which eliminates the idea of the Church or the idea of the Sacraments. To us emphatically this is not Christianity. That which to us is vital is left out.
III. Two reflections in conclusion.
(a) As we reflect upon the idea of the Church of Christ, we cannot but remember that in history the idea of the Church is anterior to the idea of the sacred writings. That is true of the Old Testament; but it is pre-eminently true of the New Testament. So we come back to first principles, and we realise that our Lord Jesus Christ did not design to spread His religion in the first instance by means of a book. No; He founded a Kingdom—a Church. It was the Church that produced the book, and those early Christians, although they had not the Bible—we ought to be better than they, because God has given us this wonderful Book—those early Christians had quite enough for salvation in the Creed, in the Church, in the Sacraments, in the proclamation of the Gospel.
(b) The idea of the Church should teach us to enlarge our horizon. Death is a beginning, not an end. Death is the going away from this outlying colony back to the home country, where is the King, and where are the myriad members of the Empire of Jesus. As we fight on, let us always remember we are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses. Let us think of that greater Church beyond the veil.
—
Rev. G. F. Holden.
Illustration‘I always think that in some respects the most magnificent episode in the history of England is the spectacle of that little handful of Englishmen holding India at the time of the Mutiny. Everything seemed to be against them. Many people thought it was quite impossible that they could prevail, or that India could be saved. How did they prevail? They prevailed by what we call prestige; they prevailed because they realised England’s greatness; because over the seas they knew the ships of England were bringing the forces of England to the succour of her distressed sons in India; because they knew the power of the Old Country and her readiness to help, and so they were content to fight on against overwhelming odds until they won.’