By Joseph Parker

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The church thus resting upon a basis so easily comprehensible, it may be interesting to inquire why all who are avowedly ruled by the same faith and philanthropy do not meet as one church, without distinction or difference of any kind whatever. As the conditions and credentials of membership are so simple, why should there be anything sectarian amongst Christian men? This iniquity throws us back, not upon Christ, but upon human nature: in human nature there are endless varieties of temperament, capacity, culture, susceptibility, and relationship. Besides this, two things are to be taken into consideration: first, that upon the two fundamental principles the church can never be divided, for by the denial of either it loses status, it ceases to be a church; and second, that since Christ’s day we have had the Epistles, which discuss some theological points and enter into various details, on the interpretations of which readers may fairly differ. Men are not saved by interpretations of apostolic epistles. They have the common organs of criticism at hand, and are responsible for their right use. A number of men man gather round each verse in each epistle, and found as many sects as there are verses, and yet the church may be an unbroken whole. The grandeur of Christ’s work is seen in that it descends below all possibility of difference or breach. The differences occasioning denominationalism are but as the variously formed members of the body, while the church is as united and vital as the heart.

No doubt the Epistles have considerably divided men upon various points; still the church is so much richer by the possession of these letters, so full of mixed experience and so fervent with the passion of an absorbing love. It is certainly better, even on the lowest ground, to have them than to be without them, though they do furnish a wide ground of controversy. It is impossible but that Peter and Paul, James and John, should write many things as coming immediately from the lips of the Lord, and that, according to their various constitutions of mind, they should present doctrines in more or less of a characteristic manner. If the writers had different methods, how can the readers fail to receive different impressions? The only teacher who can expect to preside over a united school is Euclid; but even Euclid would soon find that, if there were two methods of drawing a straight line, his school would be broken up into parties. A question may be said to be truly great in proportion as it admits of multitudinous variations of opinion and expression, yet binds men by a mastery at once irresistible and beneficent. They differ about it, yet they love it; they fight with one another about it, and yet unite against any man who would injure it. Little questions cannot permanently divide mankind; great questions will always divide men, yet always unite them at some point. Men would hardly fight about the best method of training a child. So all through life; the deeper the question, the deeper the opposition; men who would only laugh at a magician might crucify a Christ.

On the whole it may be doubted whether differences, properly argued, are not of advantage to religious progress. Now and again somewhat violent attempts are made to bring about visible unity in the Christian denominations, but they do more harm than good by calling attention to differences which are not vital, and giving what ought to be held quite secondary a factitious importance. All strained efforts after denominational unity are by their very nature bad. Unity must come, not through schemes, but through vitality, and it would be well if the most zealous charity would cease from its favorite pastime of setting traps for the capture of denominations. What is denominationalism but an inconvenient convenience? Rise or fall, it does not affect the church as we have ventured now to define it. It meets the temporary peculiarities of human nature; as if it be reproduced in a higher form as principalities, thrones and dominions in the world to come, that will not alter its relation to the sublime embodiment of triumphant Sorrow sitting in the midst of the throne. As men reside in different houses, and are yet inhabitants of the same city, so Christians may worship under different denominational polities and forms, and yet love the same Savior. It would be as reasonable to reduce all soldiers to the same stature in order to present a commanding front of patriotism, as to bring all denominations under one polity to exemplify Christian unity. The world is educated by opposition, and it is more than doubtful whether such a world as it is could be educated in any other way. Men may be “provoked” even “to love and good works.”

Union will be best attested by charity—not charity in any low sense, but charity as a phase of justice; not the charity that condescends, but the charity which concedes on equal terms. Wherever infallibility is claimed, the possibility of union is a blank: where liberty is conceded, union is already a fact. Christ is in all denominations where he is loved. The Romanist feels that he needs the crucifix, the penance, the Virgin Mother, the intermediate fire: let him have them; he will be saved, not by the alloy, but by the fine gold. The Protestant offers a less ornate worship: let him do so; he will be heard, not for his sternness, but for his sincerity. The Trinitarian firmly holds the doctrine of the triune Godhead, and the reverent Unitarian (not the scoffing Socinian) feels that if he has finished with Ecce Homo instead of with Ecce Deus, he will ultimately be led by gentle chiding to exclaim, “My Lord and my God!” Men are saved by the crucified Christ, not by the superscription which Pilate wrote.

We have endeavored broadly to mark the difference between the church and a sect. By an undue (may we not say criminal?) protrusion of the sectarian phase of religious life, a most erroneous idea respecting the church has been encouraged. If a man has not accepted a sect, it is often contended that he has not entered the church. It has been said, the act of entering the church has been regarded as a transaction between man and man, whereas is it not entirely a transaction between the spirit and Jesus Christ? Take an illustration: in some places the approach to the table of communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is considered as the sign of church membership; but before that table can be approached, the intending communicant must undergo some kind of official examination as to his theological views. Where is Christ’s authority for this? Does not such an inquiry proceed upon the principle that the Lord’s Supper is an administration rather than a communion—something to be dispensed by a superior hand rather than taken with a trembling joy by the man himself? In such a service who could be elevated to the dignity of an administrator? For mere convenience the emblems may be dispensed by the teacher or his assistants; but this is an arrangement required by order, not a superiority conferred by God. Around the cross all men are equal; around the table, which represents the cross, all men must be equal too. But this equality cannot coexist with the idea of dispensation. Men cannot meet in any official capacity whatsoever at the Lord’s table; there they may assemble only as persons for whom the body was broken and the blood shed. The clergyman is not a clergyman, the officer is not an officer, when seated at the board of communion; the communicants are there as sinners who have accepted salvation through Jesus Christ. But is not examination needed? Yes, but it must be self-examination. Paul’s words are explicit: “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” It is feared that an open table might be taken advantage of by designing persons. The answer to this is evident: no plan will keep out designing persons; they can accommodate themselves to any process; if unworthy persons do approach the table, they eat and drink to their own condemnation, not to the condemnation of other people. This is in striking accord with all that we have seen in the life of Christ, who continually threw men back upon their own consciousnesses and compelled them to judge their own actions; it is, too, in perfect harmony with the liberty which he came to inaugurate and establish among men, purifying each man’s judicial faculty, and giving him the highest advantages with a view to self-rectification.

If men choose to build places of worship, and to lay down special regulations and conditions of attendance or membership, they may be at liberty to do so; but no man can ever be at liberty to alter the terms upon which salvation is offered to the world. He who attempts to do so is guilty of the worst form of blasphemy. The sect which has perverted a communion into dispensation has interfered with the incommunicable prerogative of Christ. No man can dispense the light, or the wind, or the rain, or any of the primary forces or gifts of God; no more can any man dispense, except in the way of mere order, the body and blood of God’s Son. In the widest sense, Christ gives himself; of such a gift there cannot be a secondary giver—hence communion alone can save the dignity and value of the gift.

The place of the Lord’s Supper in the church is a subject on which diversity of opinion prevails. At first sight the idea of eating and drinking together suggests a socialism of fellowship in Christ, and pleasing sentiments of equality before God, both of which are perfectly true, and yet other and more may be meant by this communion. It is pleasant to think that in such common things as bread and wine Christ found emblems of himself; pleasant also to think of a whole community coming together from time to time to ratify their bonds. But is not all this beside the mark? With regard to the idea of hospitality, Paul sharply reproved the Corinthians for their practice at the table. “What,” said he, “have ye not houses to eat and drink in? . . . If any man hunger, let him eat at home.” The social idea, it would appear, however pleasant in itself, was not the idea contemplated in the establishment of the Communion. Men could not be social around the broken body of any man, specifically of any man whom they had accepted as their Lord. However sacredly some persons may regard a club dinner, it ought to be borne in mind that bread and wine are not mere viands for refreshment, but the emblems of Christ’s body and blood. Only cannibals could dine, in any sense of a club dinner, off a crucified man. There must then, we think, be something more, something deeper too, than the idea of friendliness or fellowship. Christ’s own explanation ought to be final: “Take, eat,” said he; “this is my body, broken for you;” “This cup is the new testament in my blood.” The author Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book Ecce Homo, says: “A common meal is the most natural and universal way of expressing, maintaining and as it were, ratifying relations of friendship.” This is true in itself, but the very idea of a “meal” is foreign to the spirit of this communion. As established by Christ, the Supper did not refer to “relations of friendship,” but exclusively to himself. Is it not so? The terms of service, as cited by the New Testament writers, certainly imply it: “This do in remembrance of me;” and again, “This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” What is there about “friendship” here? That “friendship” would be purified and elevated by such an act is undoubted, but what was the primary idea of the Supper? This idea is described as combining recollection and anticipation. Not only is it written, “This do in remembrance of me,” but also, “As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” And why retain the memory of that event? Because it was “for you:” “This is my body, which is given to you”—“This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” The personal interest of the communicant in the sacrifice of Christ is the reason for preserving the memory of “the Lord’s death.” The author of Ecce Homo also says: “It is precisely this intense personal devotion, this habitual feeding on the character of Christ, so that the essential nature of the master seems to pass into and become the essential nature of the servant—loyalty carried to the point of self-annihilation—that is expressed by the words of ‘eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ.’” We think there is some confusion of the idea here. Men could have “fed on the character of Christ” without having a sacrament, so to speak, imposed on them; but they could not “show forth” the Lord’s death without a sacrament, the very idea of “showing forth” requiring visibility and symbolism. “Feeding on the character of Christ” is purely a mental act, but a club dinner is more. And again, if eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ expresses “intense personal devotion,” where is the idea of “ratifying the relations of friendship”? It can only come in secondarily, not primarily as it did in the first part of the argument.

The Lord’s Supper is a memorial. It does not necessarily imply the joint act of a number of persons. A single man man show forth his “Lord’s death.” The club idea is not in the nature of the service at all. Men stand in a personal, not in an associated relation to that death, and the communion must be personal, not one with another, but each with the Lord. The club idea is more pertinent to the church coming together to feed on the divine Word as it may be read and expounded publicly. In the Old and New Testament men are often represented as eating and drinking the Word of God, and as speaking to one another about the bounty and goodness of the feast. Job said, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than any necessary food.” The Psalmist said, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth;” and Jesus himself said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” Men are invited to “eat and drink abundantly,” and to let their “soul delight itself in fatness,” and God is proclaimed as making “unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees (the sediment in the wine barrel) well refined.” There is much in this imagery to favor the idea of a club dinner, and to give a meaning to the expression, “feeding on the character of Christ.” If it be suggested that each man should partake of the Lord’s Supper privately, the suggestion would involve the cessation of all public service; men can pray alone, sing alone, read alone; but Christ called men to himself, constituted those who came into a church, and that church is today his representative and the treasurer of his testimony.

With regard to the expression “eat my flesh and drink my blood,” it should be noted that it was not used in connection with Supper. It forms part of an appeal to the general multitude which pursued Christ after the distribution of the loaves and fishes. He knew that the people sought him because they “did eat of the loaves and were filled,” and thereupon he discoursed concerning himself as “the living bread which came down from heaven.” His method of putting the case was likely to create strife among the literalists who heard him; and as the Jews “strove among themselves saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus answered, ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you: whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.’” The circumstances clearly show that the expression did not relate to the Supper, but was part of what we should now regard as a sermon or a religious address. In this sense there is no incongruity in rendering it as equivalent to “feeding on the character of Christ.” The hearers had eaten of the natural bread, and as usual Christ conducted them to a spiritual interpretation of natural circumstances, and so put himself before them as the living bread, a strong figurative representation of his person and work. It is though he had said—You have eaten of the bread that perishes; as that bread nourishes the body; there is another bread which nourishes the mind; as the body could not exist without the former, so the mind must die without the latter; I myself am the living bread, the mind must feed upon me specially provided for its quickening. In so addressing the people, Christ elevated a fact into a figure; he took the circumstances of the hour, and hung upon it lessons of eternity; he did not import the figure as an original conception, but found it in the passing event. To press the allegory further would be unjust, and would bring other allegories under an interpretation which would be absurd. Also to associate the expression with the Supper is to put it out of place, and to force upon the Supper violent and untenable meanings. That points of analogy may be discovered is clear enough, but what two things are there in the world which do not bear some resemblance and relation to one another?

The argument which we have sought to establish is that Christ founded his church upon a common faith and a common philanthropy; that the church is one and indivisible; that the sect is not to be confounded with the church; that the church is immortal, though the sect is temporary; that entrance into the church is purely a transaction between Christ and the individual; that within the church there is a sacrament called The Lord’s Supper, a sacrament which is not a dispensation, but a communion; a sacrament which may be approached without official examination, but not without severe self-inquest; that the Supper is a memorial and a hope—not a club dinner, even in its most refined and legitimate sense, but a special communion between the communicant and the Lord.