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CHAPTER 1.

THE CONTSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OR CHURCH POLITY.

I. DEFINITION OF THE CHURCH.

(a) The church of Christ, in its largest signification, is the whole company of regenerate persons in all times and ages, in heaven and on earth ( Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 1:22,23; 3:10; 5:24, 25; Colossians l:18; Hebrews 12:23). In this sense, the church is identical with the spiritual kingdom of God; both signify that redeemed humanity in which God in Christ exercises actual spiritual dominion ( John 3:3,5). Matthew 16:18 — “thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”; Ephesians 1:22, 23“and he put all things in subjection under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all”; 3:10 — “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”; 5:24, 25 — “But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it”; Colossians 1:18 — “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence”; Hebrews 12:23 — “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven”; John 3:3,5 — “Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God...Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

Cicero’s words apply here: “Una navis est jam bonorum omnium” — all good men are in one boat. Cicero speaks of the state but it is still truer of the church invisible. Andrews, in Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. 1883:14, mentions the following differences between the church and kingdom or, as we prefer to say, between the visible church and the invisible church: (1) the church began with Christ, the kingdom began earlier, (2) the church is confined to believers in the historic Christ, the kingdom includes all God’s children, (3) the church belongs wholly to this world, not so the kingdom, (4) the church is visible, not so the kingdom, (5) the church has quasi organic character, and leads out into local churches, not so with the kingdom. On the universal or invisible church, see Cremer, Lexicon N. T., transl., 113, 114, 331; Jacob, Ecclesiastical Polity of N. T., 12.

H. C. Vedder: “The church is a spiritual body, consisting only of those regenerated by the Spirit of God.” Yet the Westminster Confession affirms that the church consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children.” This definition includes in the church a multitude who not only give no evidence of regeneration but who plainly show themselves to be unregenerate. In many lands it practically identifies the church with the world. Augustine indeed thought that “the field,” In Matthew 13:38, is the church, whereas Jesus says very distinctly that it “is the world.” Augustine held that good and bad alike were to be permitted to dwell together in the church without attempt to separate them. See Broadus, Com. in loco. But the parable gives a reason, not why we should not try to put the wicked out of the church, but why God does not immediately put them out of the world; the tares being separated from the wheat only at the final judgment of mankind.

Yet the universal church includes all true believers. It fulfills the promise of God to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 — “Look now toward heaven and number the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.” The church shall be immortal, since it draws its life from Christ: Isaiah 65:22 — “as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people”; Zechariah 4:2,3 — “a candlestick all of gold and two olive trees by it.” Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:242, 243 — “A Spanish Roman Catholic, Cervantes, said: ‘Many are the roads by which God carries his own to heaven.’ Dollinger: ‘Theology must become a science not, as heretofore for making war, but for making peace and thus bringing about that reconciliation of churches for which the whole civilized world is longing.’ In their loftiest moods of inspiration, the Catholic Thomas · Kempis, the Puritan Milton, the Anglican Keble, rose above their peculiar tenets, and above the limits that divide denominations, into the higher regions of a common Christianity. It was the Baptist Bunyan who taught the world that there was ‘a common ground of communion, which no difference of external rites could efface.’

It was the Moravian Gambold who wrote: ‘The man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of his empire, Would speak but love. With love, the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate things, And make one thing of all theology.”’ (b) The church, in this large sense, is nothing less than the body of Christ, the organism to which he gives spiritual life and through which he manifests the fullness of his power and grace. The church therefore cannot be defined in merely human terms, as an aggregate of individuals associated for social, benevolent or even spiritual purposes. There is a transcendent element in the church. It is the great company of persons whom Christ has saved, in whom he dwells, to whom and through whom he reveals God ( Ephesians 1:22,23). Ephesians 1:22,33 — “the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.” He who is the life of nature and of humanity reveals himself most fully in the great company of those who have joined themselves to him by faith. Union with Christ is the presupposition of the church. This alone transforms the sinner into a Christian and this alone makes possible that vital and spiritual fellowship between individuals, which constitutes the organizing principle of the church. The same divine life, which ensures the pardon and the perseverance of the believer, unites him to all other believers. The indwelling Christ makes the church superior to and more permanent than all humanitarian organizations; they die but because Christ lives, the church lives also. Without a proper conception of this sublime relation of the church to Christ, we cannot properly appreciate our dignity as church members or our high calling as shepherds of the flock. Not “ubi ecclesia, ibi Christus,” but “ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia,” should be our motto, Because Christ is omnipresent and omnipotent, “the same yesterday, and today, yea and forever” ( Hebrews 13:8). What Burke said of the nation is true of the church: It is “indeed a partnership, but a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.”

McGiffert, Apostolic Church, 501 — “Paul’s conception of the church as the body of Christ was first emphasized and developed by Ignatius. He reproduces in his writings the substance of all the Paulinism that the church at large made permanently its own. The conception is the preexistence and deity of Christ, the union of the believer with Christ without which the Christian life is impossible, the importance of Christ’s death, the church the body of Christ. Rome never fully recognized Paul’s teachings, but her system rests upon his doctrine of the church the body of Christ. The modern doctrine however makes the kingdom to be not spiritual or future but a reality of this world.” The redemption of the body, the redemption of institutions, the redemption of nations is indeed, all purposed by Christ. Christians should not only strive to rescue individual men from the slough of vice but they should devise measures for draining that slough and making that vice impossible. In other words, they should labor for the coming of the kingdom of God in society. But this is not to identify the church with polities, prohibition, libraries or athletics. The spiritual fellowship is to be the fountain from which all these activities spring, while at the same time Christ’s “kingdom is not of this world” ( John 18:36).

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 24, 25, 207 — “As Christ is the temple of God, so the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As God could be seen only through Christ, so the Holy Spirit can be seen only through the church. As Christ was the image of the invisible God, so the church is appointed to be the image of the invisible Christ, and the members of Christ, when they are glorified with him, shall be the express image of his person. The church and the kingdom are not identical terms, if we mean by the kingdom the visible reign and government of Jesus Christ on earth. In another sense they are identical. As is the king, so is the kingdom. The king is present now in the world, only invisibly and by the Holy Spirit, so the kingdom is now present invisibly and spiritually in the hearts of believers. The king is to come again visibly and gloriously, so shall the kingdom appear visibly and gloriously. In other words, the kingdom is already here in mystery; it is to be here in manifestation. Now the spiritual kingdom, which extends from Pentecost to Parousia is being administered by the Holy Spirit. At the Parousia — the appearing of the Son of man in glory — when he shall take unto himself his great power and reign ( Revelation 11:17), when he who has now gone into a far country to be invested with a kingdom shall return and enter upon his government ( Luke 19:15). At that time, the invisible shall give way to the visible, the kingdom in mystery shall emerge into the kingdom in manifestation and the Holy Spirit’s administration shall yield to that of Christ.” (c) The Scriptures, however, distinguish between this invisible or universal church and the individual church, in which the universal church takes a local and temporal form and in which the idea of the church as a whole is concretely exhibited. Matthew 10:32 — “Every one therefore, who shall Confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven” 12:34, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things”; Romans 10:10 — “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt he saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”; James 1:18 — “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should he a kind of first fruits of his creatures” — we were saved, not for ourselves only, but as parts and beginnings of an organic kingdom of God; believers arc called “first fruits,” because from them the blessing shall spread until the whole world shall be pervaded with the new life; Pentecost, as the feast of first-fruits, was bit the beginning of a stream that shall continue to flow until the whole race of man as gathered in.

R. S. Storrs: “When any truth becomes central and vital, there comes the desire to utter it,” and we may add, not only in words, but in organization.

So beliefs crystallize into institutions. But Christian faith is something more vital than the common beliefs of the world. Linking the soul to Christ, it brings Christians into living fellowship with one another before any bonds of outward organization exist; outward organization, indeed, only expresses and symbolizes this inward union of spirit to Christ and to one another. Horatius Bonar: “Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another’s soul wouldst reach; It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech. Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world’s famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed.”

Contentio Veritatis, 128, 129 — “The kingdom of God is first a state of the individual soul, and then, secondly, a society made up of those who enjoy that state.” Dr. F. L. Patton: “The best way for a man to serve the church at large is to serve the church to which he belongs.” Herbert Stead: “The kingdom is not to be narrowed down to the church nor the church evaporated into the kingdom.” To do the first is to set up a monstrous ecclesiasticism; to do the second is to destroy the organism through which the kingdom manifests itself and does its work in the world (W. R.

Taylor). Prof. Dalman, in his work on The Words of Jesus in the Light of Post-biblical Writing and the Aramaic Language, contends that the Greek phrase translated “kingdom of God” should be rendered “the sovereignty of God.” He thinks that it points to the reign of God rather than to the realm over which he reigns. This rendering, if accepted, takes away entirely the support from the Ritschlian conception of the kingdom of God as an earthly and outward organization. (d) The individual church may be defined as that smaller company of regenerate persons, who, in any given community unite themselves voluntarily together in accordance with Christ’s laws, for the purpose of securing the complete establishment of his kingdom in themselves and in the world. Matthew 18:17 — “And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican; Acts 14:23 — “appointed for them elders in every church”; Romans 16:5 — “salute the church that is in their house” 1 Corinthians 1:2 — “the church of God which is at Corinth”; 4:17 — “even as I teach everywhere in every church”; 1 Thess. 2:14 — “the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus.”

We do not define the church as a body of “baptized believers,” because baptism is but one of “Christ’s laws,” in accordance with which believers unite themselves. Since these laws are the laws of church organization contained in the New Testament, no Sunday School, Temperance Society or Young Men’s Christian Association, is properly a church. These organizations lack the transcendent element (they are instituted and managed by man only). They are not confined to the regenerate or to those alone who give credible evidence of regeneration, they presuppose and require no particular form of doctrine. They observe no ordinances, they are at best mere adjuncts and instruments of the church, but are not themselves churches and their decisions therefore are devoid of the divine authority and obligation which belong to the decisions of the church.

The laws of Christ, in accordance with which believers unite themselves into churches, may be summarized as follows: (1) The sufficiency and sole authority of Scripture as the rule both of doctrine and polity. (2) Credible evidence of regeneration and conversion as prerequisite to church membership. (3) Immersion only, as answering to Christ’s command of baptism and to the symbolic meaning of the ordinance. (4) The order of the ordinances, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as of divine appointment as well as the ordinances themselves. (5) The right of each member of the church to a voice in its government and discipline. (6) Each church, while holding fellowship with other churches, solely responsible to Christ. (7) The freedom of the individual conscience and the total independence of church and state.

Hovey in his Restatement of Denominational Principles (Am. Bap. Pub.

Society) gives these principles as follows: 1. The supreme authority of the Scriptures in matters of religion. 2. Personal accountability to God in religion. 3. Union with Christ essential to salvation. 4. A new life the only evidence of that union. 5. The new life, one of unqualified obedience to Christ. The most concise statement of Baptist doctrine and history is that of Vedder, in Jackson’s Dictionary of Religious Knowledge. 1:74-85.

With the lax views of Scripture, which are becoming common among us there is a tendency in our day to lose sight of the transcendent element in the church. Let us remember that the church is not a humanitarian organization resting upon common human brotherhood but a supernatural body, which traces its descent from the second, not the first, Adam and which manifests the power of the divine Christ. Mazzini in Italy claimed Jesus but repudiated his church. So modern socialists cry: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and deny that there is need of anything more than human unity, development, and culture. But God has made the church to sit with Christ “in the heavenly places” ( Ephesians 2:6). It is the regeneration, which comes about through union with Christ, which constitutes the primary and most essential element in ecclesiology. “We do not stand, first of all, for restricted communion nor for immersion as the only valid form of baptism nor for any particular theory of Scripture but rather for a regenerate church membership. The essence of the gospel is a new life in Christ, of which Christian experience is the outworking, and Christian consciousness is the witness. Christian life is as important as conversion. Faith must show itself by works. We must seek the temporal as well as spiritual salvation of men and the salvation of society also” (Leighton Williams).

E. G. Robinson: “Christ founded a church only proleptically. In Matthew 18:17, ejkklhsi>a is not used technically. The church is an outgrowth of the Jewish synagogue, though its method and economy are different. There was little or no organization at first. Christ himself did not organize the church. This was the work of the apostles after Pentecost.

The germ however existed before. Three persons may constitute a church, and may administer the ordinances. Councils have only advisory authority. Diocesan episcopacy is anti-scriptural and anti- Christian.”

The principles mentioned above are the essential principles of Baptist churches, although other bodies of Christians have come to recognize a portion of them. Bodies of Christians which refuse to accept these principles we may, in a somewhat loose and modified sense, call churches but we cannot regard them as churches organized in all respects according to Christ’s laws or as completely answering to the New Testament model of church organization. We follow common usage when we address a Lieutenant Colonel as “Colonel,” and a Lieutenant Governor as “Governor.” It is only a courtesy to speak of pseudo-Baptist organizations as “churches,” although we do not regard these churches as organized in full accordance with Christ’s laws as they are indicated to us in the New Testament. To refuse thus to recognize them would be a discourtesy like that of the British Commander in Chief, when he addressed General Washington as “Mr. Washington.”

As Luther, having found the doctrine of justification by faith, could not recognize that doctrine as Christian which taught justification by works but denounced the church, which held it as Antichrist, saying, “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, God help me.” So we, in matters not indifferent, as feet washing but vitally affecting the existence of the church, as regenerate church membership, must stand by the New Testament and refuse to call any other body of Christians a regular church, that is not organized according to Christ’s laws. The English word ‘church’ like the Scotch ‘kirk’ and the German ‘Kirche,’ is derived from the Greek kuriakh>, and means ‘belonging to the Lord.’ The term itself should teach us to regard only Christ’s laws as our rule of organization. (e) Besides these two signification of the term ‘church,’ there are properly in the New Testament no others. The word ejkklhsi>a is indeed used in Acts 7:38; 19 32, 39; Hebrews 2:12, to designate a popular assembly but since this is a secular use of the term, it does not here concern us. In certain passages, as for example Acts 9:31 (ejkklhsi>a , sing., a ABC), 1 Corinthians 12:28, Philippians 3:6, and 1 Timothy 3:15, ejkklhsi>a appears to be used either as a generic or as a collective term, to denote simply the body of independent local churches existing in a given region or at a given epoch. But since there is no evidence that these churches were bound together in any outward organization, this use of the term ejkklhsi>a cannot be regarded as adding any new sense to those of ‘the universal church’ and ‘the local church’ already mentioned. Acts 7:38 — “the church [margin ‘congregation] in the wilderness” = the whole body of the people of Israel; 19:32 — the assembly was in confusion — the tumultuous mob in the theater at Ephesus; 39 — “the regular assembly”; 9:31 — “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace; being edified”; 1 Corinthians 12:28 — “And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers”; Philippians 3:6 — as touching zeal, persecuting the church”; 1 Timothy 3:15 — “that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

In the original use of the word ejkklhsi>a , as a popular assembly, there was doubtless an allusion to the derivation from ejk and kale>w , to call out by herald. Some have held that the N. T. term contains an allusion to the fact that the members of Christ’s church are called, chosen, elected by God. This, however, is more than doubtful. In common use, the term had lost its etymological meaning and signified merely an assembly, however gathered or summoned. The church was never so large that it could not assemble, The church of Jerusalem gathered for the choice of deacons ( Acts 6:2,5), and the church of Antioch gathered to hear Paul’s account of his missionary journey ( Acts 14:27).

It is only by a common figure of rhetoric that many churches are spoken of together in the singular number, in such passages as Acts 9:31. We speak generically of’ ‘man,’ meaning the whole race of men and of ‘the horse,’ meaning all horses. Gibbon, speaking of the successive tribes that swept down upon the Roman Empire, uses a noun in the singular number, and describes them as “the several detachments of that immense army of northern barbarians,” — yet he does not mean to intimate that these tribes had any common government. So we may speak of “the American college” or “the American theological seminary,” but we do not thereby mean that the colleges or the seminaries are bound together by any tie of outward organization.

So Paul says that God has set in the church apostles, prophets, and teachers 1 Corinthians 12:28), but the word ‘church’ is only a collective term for the many independent churches.

In this same sense, we may speak of “the Baptist church” of New York or of America. It must be remembered that we use the term without any such implication of common government as is involved in the phrases ‘the Presbyterian Church’ or ‘the Protestant Episcopal Church’ or ‘the Roman Catholic Church.’ With us, in this connection, the term ‘church’ means simply ‘churches.’

Broadus, in his Com. on Matthew, page 359, suggests that the word ejkklhsi>a in Acts 9:31, “denotes the original church at Jerusalem, whose members were by the persecution widely scattered throughout Judea and Galilee and Samaria and held meetings wherever they were but still belonged to the one original organization. When Paul wrote to the Galatians, nearly twenty years later, these separate meetings had been organized into distinct churches and so he speaks ( Galatians 1:22) in reference to that same period, of “the churches of Jafiza which were in Christ.” On the meaning of ejkklhsi>a see Cremer, Lex. N. T., 329; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:18; Girdlestone, Syn. O. T., 367; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 301; Dexter, Congregationalism, 25; Dagg, Church Order, 100-120; Robinson, N. T. Lex., sub voce .

The prevailing usage of the N. T. gives to the term ejkklhsi>a the second of these two significant meanings. It is this local church only which has definite and temporal existence and of this alone we henceforth treat. Our definition of the individual church implies the two following particulars:

A. The church, like the family and the state, is an institution of divine appointment. This is plain: (a) from its relation to the church universal as its concrete embodiment, (b) from the fact that its necessity is grounded in the social and religious nature of man, (c) from the Scripture, as for example, Christ’s command in Matthew 18:17, and the designation ‘church of God,’ applied to individual churches ( 1 Corinthians 1:2).

President Wayland: “The universal church comes before the particular church. The society which Christ has established is the foundation of every particular association calling itself a church of Christ.” Andrews in Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. 1853:35-58, on the conception ejkklhsi>a in the N. T., says that “the ‘church’ is the prius of all local ‘churches.’ ejkklhsi>a in Acts 9:31 = the church, so far as represented in those provinces. It is ecumenical local, as in 1 Corinthians 10:33. The local church is a microcosm, a specialized localization of the universal body. lh;q; , in the O. T. and in the Targums, means the whole congregation of Israel, and then secondarily those local bodies which were parts and representations of the whole. Christ, using Aramaic, probably used lh;q; in Matthew 18:17. He took his idea of the church from it, not from the heathen use of the word ejkklhsi>a, which expresses the notion of locality and state much more than the lh;q;. The larger sense of ejkklhsi>a is the primary. Local churches are points of consciousness and activity for the great all inclusive unit and they are not themselves the units for an ecclesiastical aggregate. They are faces, not parts of the one church.”

Christ, in Matthew 18:17, delegates authority to the whole congregation of believers and, at the same time, limits authority to the local church. The local church is not an end in itself but exists for the sake of the kingdom. Unity is not to be that of merely local churches but that of the kingdom, and that kingdom is internal, “cometh not with observation” ( Luke 17:20), but consists in “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” ( Romans 14:17). In the universal sense, the word “church” is not employed by any other N. T. writer before Paul’s writings. Paul was interested, not simply in individual conversions but he was more interested in the growth of the church of God as the body of Christ. He held to the unity of all local churches with the mother church at Jerusalem. The church in a city or in a house is merely a local manifestation of the one universal church and derived its dignity therefrom. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: “As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and being gathered became one, so may thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.”

Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 92 — “The social action of religion springs from its very essence. Men of the same religion have no more imperious need than that of praying and worshiping together. State police have always failed to confine growing religious sects within the sanctuary or the home. God, it is said, is the place where spirits blend. In rising toward him, man necessarily passes beyond the limits of his own individuality. He feels instinctively that the principle of his being is the principle of the life of his brethren also, that that which gives him safety must give it to all.”

Rothe held that, as men reach the full development of their nature and appropriate the perfection of the Savior, the separation between the religious and the moral life will vanish and the Christian state, as the highest sphere of human life representing all human functions, will displace the church. “In proportion as the Savior Christianizes the state by means of the church, must the progressive completion of the structure of the church prove the cause of its abolition. The decline of the church is not therefore to be deplored but is to be recognized as the consequence of the independence and completeness of the religious life” (Encyc. Brit., 21:2). But it might equally be maintained that the state, as well as the church, will pass away when the kingdom of God is fully come. See John 4:21 — “the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father”; 1 Corinthians 15:24 — “Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power”; Revelation 21:22 — “And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb, are the temple thereof.”

B. The church, unlike the family and the state, is a voluntary society. (a) This results from the fact that the local church is the outward expression of that rational and free life in Christ, which characterizes the church as a whole. In this it differs from those other organizations of divine appointment, entrance into which is not optional. Membership in the church is not hereditary or compulsory. (b) The doctrine of the church, as thus defined, is a necessary outgrowth of the doctrine of regeneration. As this fundamental spiritual change is mediated not by outward appliances but by inward and conscious reception of Christ and his truth, union with the church logically follows, not precedes, the soul’s spiritual union with Christ.

We have seen that the church is the body of Christ. We now perceive that the church is, by the impartation to it of Christ’s life, made a living body with duties and powers of its own. A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 53, emphasizes the preliminary truth. He shows that the definition — the church, a voluntary association of believers, united together for the purposes of worship and edification, is most inadequate, not to say incorrect. It is no more true than that hands and feet are voluntarily united in the human body for the purposes of locomotion and work. The church is formed from within. Christ, present by the Holy Ghost, regenerating men by the sovereign action of the Spirit and organizing them into himself as the living center, is the only principle that can explain the existence of the church. The Head and the body are therefore One — one in fact and one in name. He whom God anointed and filled with the Holy Ghost is called “the Christ” ( 1 John 5:1 — “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God”); and the church which is his body and fullness is also called “the Christ” ( 1 Corinthians 12:12 — “all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is the Christ”).

Dorner includes under his doctrine of the church: (1) The genesis of the church through the new birth of the Spirit or Regeneration. (2) The growth and persistence of the church through the continuous operation of the Spirit in the means of grace, or Ecclesiology proper, as others call it. (3) The completion of the church, or Eschatology. While this scheme seems designed to favor a theory of baptismal regeneration, we must commend its recognition of the fact that the doctrine of the church grows out of the doctrine of regeneration and is determined in its nature by it. If regeneration has always conversion for its obverse side and if Conversion always includes faith in Christ, it is vain to speak of regeneration without faith. And if union with the church is but the outward expression of a preceding union with Christ, which involves regeneration and conversion then involuntary church membership is an absurdity and a misrepresentation of the whole method of salvation. ‘The value of compulsory religion may be illustrated from David Hume’s experience. A godly matron of the Canongate, so runs the story, when Hume sank in the mud in her vicinity and, on account of his obesity, could not get out, compelled the skeptic to say the Lord’s Prayer before she would help him. Amos Kendall, on the other hand, concluded in his old age that he had not been acting on Christ’s plan for saving the world, and so, of his own accord, connected himself with the church. Martineau, Study, 1:319 — “Till we come to the State and the Church, we do not reach the highest organism of human life, into the perfect working of which all the disinterested affections and moral enthusiasms and noble ambitions flow.”

Socialism abolishes freedom, which the church cultivates and insists upon as the principle of its life. Tertullian: “Nec religionis est cogere religionem” — “It is not the business of religion to compel religion.”

Vedder, History of the Baptists: “The community of goods in the church at Jerusalem was a purely voluntary matter. See Acts 5:4 — ‘While it remained, did it not remain thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power?’ The community of goods does not seem to have continued in the church at Jerusalem after the temporary stress had been relieved and there is no reason to believe that any other church in the apostolic age practiced anything of the kind.” By abolishing freedom, socialism destroys all possibility of economical progress. The economical principle of socialism is that, relatively to the enjoyment of commodities, the individual shall be taken care of by the community, to the effect of his being relieved of the care of himself. The communism in the Acts was not for the community of mankind in general but only for the church within itself, it was not obligatory but left to the discretion of individuals and was it not permanent but devised for a temporary crisis. On socialism, see James MacGregor, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:35-68.

Schurman, Agnosticism, 166 — “Few things are of more practical consequence for the future of religion in America than the duty of all good men to become identified with the visible church. Liberal thinkers have, as a rule, underestimated the value of the church. Their point of view is individualistic, ‘as though a man were author of himself and knew no other kin.’ ‘The old is for slaves,’ they declare. But it is also true that the old is for freedmen who know its true uses. It is the bane of the religion of dogma that it has driven many of the choicest religious souls out of the churches. In its purification of the temple, it has lost sight of the object of the temple. The church, as an institution, is an organism and embodiment such as the religion of spirit necessarily creates. Spiritual religion is not the enemy, it is the essence, of institutional religion.”

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.

1. The fact of organization.

Organization may exist without knowledge of writing, without written records, lists of members, or formal choice of officers. These last are the proofs, reminders and helps of organization but they are not essential to it.

It is however not merely informal but formal organization in the church, to which the New Testament bears witness.

That there was such organization is abundantly shown from (a) its stated meetings, (b) elections, and (c) officers, (d) from the designations of its ministers, together with (e) the recognized authority of the minister and of the church, (f) from its discipline, (g) contributions, (h) letters of commendation. More is shown from (i) registers of widows, (j) uniform customs, and (k) ordinances, (l) from the order enjoined and observed, (m) the qualifications for membership and of (n) the common work of the whole body. (a) Acts 20:7 — “upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”; Hebrews 10:25 — “not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another.” (b) Acts 1:23-26 — the election of Matthias; 6:5, 6 — the election of deacons. (c) Philippians 1:1 — “the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.” (d) Acts 20:17,23 — “the elders of the church . . . . the flock, in which the Holy Spirit bath made you bishop, [margin: ‘overseers ‘1.” (e) Matthew 18:17 — “And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican”; 1 Peter 5:2 — “Tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according to the will of God.” (f) 1 Corinthians 5:4,5,13 — “in the name of our Lord Jesus, ye being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may he saved in the day of the Lord Jesus...Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (g) Romans 15:26 — “For it hath been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at Jerusalem”, 1 Corinthians 16:1,2 — “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collection be made when I come.” (h) Acts 18:27 — “And when he was minded to pass over into Achaia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him”; 2 Corinthians 3:1 — “Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as do some epistles of commendation to you or from you ?” (i) 1 Timothy 5:9 — “Let none be enrolled as a widow under threescore years old”; cf . Acts 6:1 — “there arose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.’ (j) 1 Corinthians 11:16 — “But if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.” (k) Acts 2:41 — “They then that received his word were baptized”; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 — “For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you” — the institution of the Lord’s Supper. (1) 1 Corinthians 14:40 — “let all things be done decently and in order”; Colossians 2:5 — “For though I am absent in the flesh yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.” (m) Matthew 28:19 — “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nation; baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; Acts 2:47 — “And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved.” (n) Philippians 2:30 — “because for the work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding his life to supply that which was lacking in your service toward me.”

As indicative of a developed organization in the N. T. church, of which only the germ existed before Christ’s death, it is important to notice the progress in names from the Gospels to the Epistles. In the Gospels, the word “disciples” is the common designation of Christ’s followers but it is not once found in the Epistles. In the Epistles, there are only “saints,” “brethren,” “churches.” A consideration of the facts here referred to is sufficient to evince the unscriptural nature of two modern theories of the church:

A. The theory that the church is an exclusively spiritual body, destitute of all formal organization, and bound together only by the mutual relation of each believer to his indwelling Lord.

The church, upon this view, so far as outward bonds are concerned, is only an aggregation of isolated units. Those believers, who chance to gather at a particular place or to live at a particular time, constitute the church of that place or time. This view is held by the Friends and by the Plymouth Brethren. It ignores the tendencies to organization inherent in human nature, confounds the visible with the invisible church and is directly opposed to the Scripture representations of the visible church as comprehending some, of whom, are not true believers. Acts 5:1-11 — Ananias and Sapphira show that the visible church comprehended some who were not true believers; 1 Corinthians 14:23 — “If therefore the whole church be assembled together and all speak with tongues, and there come in men unlearned or unbelieving, will they not say that ye are mad?” — here, if the church had been an unorganized assembly, the unlearned visitors who came in would have formed a part of it; Philippians 3:18 — “For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Some years ago a book was placed upon the Index, at Rome, entitled: “The Priesthood a Chronic Disorder of the Human Race.” The Plymouth Brethren dislike church organizations for fear they will become machines.

They dislike ordained ministers, for fear they will become bishops. They object to praying for the Holy Spirit, because he was given on Pentecost, ignoring the fact that the church after Pentecost so prayed. See Acts 4:31 — “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” What we call a giving or descent of the Holy Spirit is, since the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, only a manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit, and this certainly may be prayed for. See Luke 11:13 — “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

The Plymouth Brethren would “unite Christendom by its dismemberment and do away with all sects by the creation of a new sect, more narrow and bitter in its hostility to existing sects than any other.” Yet the tendency to organize is so strong in human nature, that even Plymouth Brethren, when they meet regularly together, fall into an informal, if not a formal, organization, certain teachers and leaders are tacitly recognized as officers of the body, committees and rules are unconsciously used for facilitating business. Even one of their own writers, C. H. M. speaks of the “natural tendency to association without God, as in the Shinar Association or Babel Confederacy of Gen. 11, which aimed at building up a name upon the earth. The Christian church is God’s appointed association to take the place of all these. Hence God confounds the tongues in Gen. (judgment), gives tongues in Acts 2 (grace) but only one tongue is spoken in Revelations 7 (glory).”

The Nation, Oct. 16, 1890:303 — “Every body of men must have one or more leaders. If these are not provided, they will make them for themselves. You cannot get fifty men together, at least of the Anglo- Saxon race, without their choosing a presiding officer and giving him power to enforce rules and order.” Even socialists and anarchists have their leaders, who often exercise arbitrary power and oppress their followers. Lyman Abbott says nobly of the community of true believers: “The grandest river in the world has no banks. It rises in the Gulf of Mexico, it sweeps up through the Atlantic Ocean along our coast, it crosses the Atlantic, and spreads out in great broad fanlike form along the coast of Europe. Whatever land that it kisses, there the land blooms and blossoms with the fruit of its love. The apricot and the fig are the witness of its fertilizing power. It is bound together by the warmth of its own particles and by nothing else.” This is a good illustration of the invisible church and of its course through the world. But the visible church is bound to be distinguishable from unregenerate humanity and its inner principle of association inevitably leads to organization.

Dr. Wm. Reid, Plymouth Brethrenism Unveiled, 79-142, attributes to the sect the following Church principles: (1) The church did not exist before Pentecost. (2) The visible and the invisible church identical. (3) The one assembly of God. (4) The presidency of the Holy Spirit. (5) Rejection of a one-man and man-made ministry. (6) the church is without government.

Also the following heresies: (1) Christ’s heavenly humanity. (2) Denial of Christ’s righteousness, as being obedience to law. (3) Denial that Christ’s righteousness is imputed. (4) Justification in the risen Christ. (5) Christ’s non-atoning sufferings; (6) Denial of moral law as rule of life. (7) The Lord’s day is not the Sabbath. (8) Perfectionism. (9) Secret rapture of the saints caught up to be with Christ. To these we may add: (10) Pre-millennial advent of Christ.

On the Plymouth Brethren and their doctrine, see British Quar., Oct. 1873:202; Princeton Rev., 1872:48-77; H. M. King, in Baptist Review, 1881:438-465; Fish, Ecclesiology, 314-316; Dagg, Church Order, 80-83; R. H. Carson, The Brethren, 8-14; J. C. L. Carson, The Heresies of the Plymouth Brethren; Croskery, Plymouth Brethrenism; Teulon, Hist. and Teachings of Plymouth Brethren.

B. The theory that the form of church organization is not definitely prescribed in the New Testament but is a matter of expediency, each body of believers being permitted to adopt that method of organization which best suits its circumstances and condition.

The view under consideration seems in some respects to be favored by Neander and is often regarded as incidental to his larger conception of church history as a progressive development. But a proper theory of development does not exclude the idea of a church organization already complete in all essential particulars before the close of the inspired canon so that the record of it may constitute a providential example of binding authority upon all subsequent ages. The view mentioned exaggerates the differences of practice among the N. T. churches. It underestimates the need of divine direction as to methods of church union and admits a principle of ‘church powers,’ which may be historically shown to be subversive of the very existence of the church as a spiritual body.

Dr. Galusha Anderson finds the theory of optional church government in Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity and says that not until Bishop Bancroft, was there claimed a divine right of Episcopacy. Hunt, also, in his Religious Thought in England, 1:57, says that Hooker gives up the divine origin of Episcopacy. So Jacob, Ecclesiastical Polity of the N.T., and Hatch, Organization of Early Christian Churches, both Jacob and Hatch belonging to the Church of England. Hooker identified the church with the nation. See Ecclesiastical Polity, book viii, chap. 1:7; 4:6; 8:9. He held that the state has committed itself to the church and that therefore, the church has no right to commit itself to the state. The assumption, however, that the state has committed itself to the church is entirely unwarranted. See Gore, Incarnation, 209, 210. Hooker declares that, even if the Episcopalian order were laid down in Scripture, which he denies, it would still not be unalterable. Since neither “God’s being the author of laws for the government of his church nor his committing them unto Scripture, is any reason sufficient wherefore all churches should forever be bound to keep them without change.”

T. M. Lindsay, in Contemp. Rev., Oct 1895:548-563, asserts that there were at least five different forms of church government in apostolic times.

They were derived from the seven wise men of the Hebrew village community, representing the political side of the synagogue system. Some were derived from the ejpisko>pov , the director of the religious or social club among the heathen Greeks, from the patronate prosta>thv proista>menov known among the Romans, the churches of Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica, being of this sort. Others were derived from the personal prominence of one man, nearest in family to our Lord. James, being president of the church at Jerusalem and from temporary superintendents (hJgou>menoi , or leaders of the band of missionaries, as in Crete and Ephesus. Between all these churches of different polities, there was intercommunication and fellowship. Lindsay holds that the unity was wholly spiritual. It seems to us that he has succeeded merely in proving five different varieties into one generic type (the generic type being only democratic, with two orders of officials, and two ordinances.) In other words, in showing that the simple N. T. model adopts itself to many changing conditions, while the main outlines do not change. Upon any other theory church polity is a matter of individual taste or of temporary fashion. Shall church order be conformed by missionaries to the degraded ideas of the nations among which they labor? Shall church government be despotic in Turkey, a limited monarchy in England, a democracy in the United States of America and two-headed in Japan? For the development theory of Neander, see his Church History, 1:179-190. On the general subject, see Hitchcock, in Am. Theol. Rev., 1860:28-54; Davidson, Ecclesiastical Polity, 1-12; Harvey, The Church. 2. The nature of this organization.

The nature of any organization may be determined by asking first who constitute its members, secondly, for what object has it been formed and thirdly, what are the laws, which regulate its operations.

The three questions with which our treatment of the nature of this organization begins are furnished us by Pres. Wayland, in his Principles and Practices of Baptists.

A. They only can properly be members of the local church, who have previously become members of the church universal or, in other words, have become regenerate persons.

Only those who have been previously united to Christ are, in the New Testament, permitted to unite with his church. See Acts 2:47 — “And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved [Am.

Rev.: ‘those that were saved’]”; 5:14 — “and believers were the more added to the Lord’; 1 Corinthians 1:2 — “the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to he saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.”

From this limitation of membership to regenerate persons, certain results follow: (a) Since each member bears supreme allegiance to Christ, the church as a body must recognize Christ as the only lawgiver. The relation of the individual Christian to the church does not supersede the church but furthers and expresses his relation to Christ. 1 John 2:20 — “And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things” — see Neander, Com., in loco . No believer is at liberty to forego this maturity and personal independence, bestowed in that inward anointing [of the Holy Spirit], or to place himself in a dependent relation, inconsistent with this birthright, to any teacher whatever among men. …This inward anointing furnishes an element of resistance to such arrogated authority.” Here we have reproved the tendency on the part of ministers to take the place of the church, in Christian work and worship, instead of leading it forward in work and worship of its own. The missionary who keeps his converts in prolonged and unnecessary tutelage is also untrue to the church organization of the New Testament and untrue to Christ whose aim in church training is to educate his followers to the bearing of responsibility and the use of liberty. Macaulay: “The only remedy for the evils of liberty is liberty.” “Malo periculosam libertatem” — “Liberty is to be preferred with all its dangers.” Edwin Burritt Smith: “There is one thing better than good government, and that is selfgovernment.”

By their own mistakes, a self-governing people and a selfgoverning church will finally secure good government whereas the “good government” which keeps them in perpetual tutelage will make good government forever impossible. <19E412> Psalm 144:12 — “our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth.” Archdeacon Hare: “U a gentleman is to grow up, it must be like a tree; there must be nothing between him and heaven.” What is true of the gentleman is true of the Christian. There needs to be encouraged and cultivated in him an independence of human authority and a sole dependence upon Christ. The most sacred duty of the minister is to make his church self-governing and self-supporting and the best test of his success is the ability of the church to live and prosper after he has left it or after he is dead. Such ministerial work requires self-sacrifice and selfeffacement.

The natural tendency of every minister is to usurp authority and to become a bishop. He has in him an undeveloped pope. Dependence on his people for support curbs this arrogant spirit. A church establishment fosters it. The remedy both for slavishness and for arrogance lies in constant recognition of Christ as the only Lord. (b) Since each regenerate man recognizes in every other a brother in Christ, the several members are upon a footing of absolute equality ( Matthew 23:8-10). Matthew 23:8-10 — “But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven”; John 15:5 — “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” No one branch of the vine outranks another. One may be more advantageously situated, more ample in size, more fruitful but all are alike in kind and draw vitality from one source.

Among the planets “one star differeth from another star in glory” ( Corinthians 15:41), yet all shine in the same heaven, and draw their light from the same sun. “The serving man may know more of the mind of God than the scholar.” Christianity has therefore been the foe to heathen castes. The Japanese noble objected to it, “because the brotherhood of man was incompatible with proper reverence for rank.” There can be no rightful human lordship over God’s heritage ( 1 Peter 5:3 — “neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but by making yourselves enemies to the flock”).

Constantine thought more highly of his position as member of Christ’s church than of his position as head of the Roman Empire. Neither the church nor its pastor should be dependent upon the unregenerate members of the congregation. Many a pastor is in the position of a lion tamer with his head in the lion’s mouth. So long as he strokes the fur the right way, all goes well but, if by accident he strokes the wrong way, off goes his head. Dependence upon the spiritual body, which he instructs, is compatible with the pastor’s