By Joseph Parker

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For what purpose did Christ call men? Where they to be his bodyguard during his presence upon earth, and to be disbanded after his ascension? Or were they to be confederated into a perpetual memorial of his earthly mission? This brings us to an analysis of the ecclesiastical idea.

The men who obeyed the call were classified under a special and most sacred designation. They were first known as “My disciples”; long afterwards “believers,” “saints,” “Christians,” became synonymous and interchangeable terms, the whole of them being frequently expressed by one word—church. This was a confederation of hearts, founded on a purely moral basis, subsisting continually upon a deep love for the Christ who had called them to his fellowship. The root idea of the church is that of a particular relation of man to man, originated by a common relation to Jesus Christ. When men are ardently attached to their native country, they are related to one another as compatriots, though they may differ upon every question in political science. It is the same in the church: attachment to Jesus Christ is everything; the widest differences upon theology may exist, but no doctrinal heresy can break up the vital and eternal union of souls which is brought about by an all-absorbing love for Jesus Christ.

It may appear that faith is almost an insignificant condition of membership in Christ’s kingdom. Not so, however, when the matter is carefully considered. The word “belief” is not simple, but compound—a term most inclusive and exacting. Popularly understood, “belief” is supposed to denote an act of the mind in relation to statements which may be laid before it; as, for example, a man believes that Milton wrote Paradise Lost, that Columbus discovered America, or that a ship will leave Britain for Africa upon a given day. But such a belief may amount to nothing more than that the man does not disbelieve these statements; or if it mean that he has examined the evidence for himself, yet not one of the statements may touch his deepest nature: it would give him no concern to know that Milton wrote the Iliad, and that Homer wrote Paradise Lost, or that the ship in the question is not going to Africa. The man cannot be said to “believe,” in any deep and true sense of that term. Belief means more than any act of the mere understanding can ever mean. Religion is not so much an appeal to the intellectual as to the moral nature; this is true of all religions, but preeminently characteristic of Christianity. The intellectual is to be affected through the moral; the mind is not to lie dormant, it is to be brought into the most active service; but the law is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy . . .  mind.” Loving with the mind is the idea: the very intellect is to be turned into an organ of affection, logic itself to be aglow with moral fire; it is not, Thou shalt believe with thy mind, but, Thou shalt love with thy mind: “with the heart man believes unto righteousness.” Belief thus becomes more than an assent to a set of notions. It carries with it the whole man, dominating over his entire course; in fact, it is even more than this—it is life itself. Whatever a man lives for is his faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. What then? Is this extraordinary? It is one of the most common notions in life! Without faith it is as impossible to please man as to please God. Give any man to understand that he has lost the faith of his associates, and he will realize the most complete humiliation and impoverishment. In this vital sense the belief of man is challenged by Jesus Christ: out of it is to come the whole purpose and strength of life. Christ is to absorb affection, and his will is to be, not the arbitrary, but the heart-elected. Master everywhere. A man may believe that a house has been robbed, but his belief is altogether a deeper reality when he is given to understand that the house which has been robbed is his own. That which was merely a piece of information lodged in the mind becomes a compelling and ruling power in the life. So a man may say of Jesus Christ, “I believe he lived, died and rose again,” and may yet know nothing of the ruling force of these events in his heart. The facts have not become truths to him; they are outside realities, not internal and undisputed sovereignties. When he lives by them, he believes them; when he believes them, he lives by them; when belief and life are synonymous terms, the man is a member of the church of Christ—his nature is written in heaven. He may hold the most extraordinary conclusions in speculative theology, but he cannot be unchurched by metaphysics. Where the love is right, the formal expression of notions is of small consequence. A man may keep his whole self and accept all technicalities in theology, but a man cannot love without giving up himself. He must either “sell all he has, and give to the poor” or he must be “born again” into a new spirit in which there shall be no self, and then he is in the kingdom of Christ.

This shows the inclusiveness of the church. The sect can hold but a few, the church may comprehend all. Christ established no sect; he founded a church. To be a Christian, it is not necessary to be a scholastic theologian; nor is it necessary to choose a sectarian appellation; nothing is necessary but perfect love of the “Beloved Son.” It is with Christianity as with patriotism, to use an illustration: love of country is independent of love of party; a patriot might die for his sovereign without knowing the subtle degrees of loyalty which are indicated by party nomenclature. Entrance into the church is a transaction between Jesus Christ and the individual heart; whoever has given his love to God’s Son is a member of the church: whether, for the sake of convenience, or for purposes of evangelization, he may join with a sect, it is for him to consider, but most assuredly he is in Christ’s church, by the indefeasible and all-comprehending right of love. The immorality of love is the immorality of the church. The small mud huts of bigotry will be submerged by the mighty cataclysm of human progress, but the church founded upon a rock will remain above the floods. Love is the security of the church.

Horror at what is called heresy may be accounted for on natural grounds. It is natural to venerate the ancient; it is natural, too, for the timid to dread what is speculative or experimental. Men hesitate before cutting down a bridge which bears the footprints of many generations, though a better bridge may be erected. Man cannot easily shake off the associations of time, nor is it desirable that he should. The known has certain advantages over the unknown. In business, in politics, in medicine, in government, and most of the concerns of common life, the same regard for the past prevails. Changes, it is thought, always involve more or less of risk; and though results may be right, processes may be hazardous and difficult. But by the noble boldness of many recent inquirers, even change itself is enriched with hallowed and inspiring associations. The heretics in civilization, not to speak of theology, have done most for the world. Timid men cringed, and selfish men denounced, when the heretics struck openly at the old method of doing things. They dreaded changes as men might dread floods which carry destruction everywhere.

“Expatiata ruunt per apertos flumina campos;
Cumque satis arbusta simul, pecudesque, virosque,
Tectaque, cumque suis rapiunt penetralia sacris.”

[“The expanded rivers, with spreading waves, rush into the open plains and bear away the groves, with the standing corn, flocks, men, houses and temples with the sacred images and altars.”]

Such swollen rivers as Ovid describes have been greatly dreaded in the church, as if no promise lay around that church as a perpetual defense. Poor buttresses can be made of paper; but who can storm the fortress of love? It is forgotten, besides, how great a guarantee of security has been provided by Christ in the condition requiring discipleship to be attested by the most practical service. Jesus Christ and his disciples were not a band of contemplative philosophers perambulating in the cold grandeur of isolation from all the rough world, in some charmed Lyceum; they threaded their enlightening and healing way through the thronging multitudes; daily were the disciples shown that love and work were the hemispheres of the Christian life. Love was not a mere sentiment, a self-considering and self-satisfying passion, but the spring of an inclusive and intensely practical philanthropy. Christ drilled his disciples in a reverent and generous regard for the human body. He told them to divide their small stock of provisions in the desert place with the 5,000 strangers; and when he sketched the proceedings of the great judicial day, he sent men to heaven or to hell according as they had been philanthropic or misanthropic towards himself as atomized by the least of his brethren. He asked no man what he believed, but told every man how much he had done to mitigate the sufferings of good men, or what opportunities of such mitigation had been neglected. Philanthropy was made the test of love towards God, for who can love God without loving his brother also? This is a valuable, and not less so because incidental, illustration of the inseparableness of the two great commandments of the law—Love God and love thy neighbor. The love of man comes from love of God, and in the judgement, love of God will be tried by love of man. The apostle John, who is generally supposed to have been incomparably amiable, said plainly that if any man says he loves God, and yet hates his brother, he is a liar; and no liar shall enter the church: he may surreptitiously creep into the sect, but shall have his portion in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone. The true church-member can never become a heretic in any bad sense of the term: his love towards God and his love towards man keep him perfectly balanced; he has no time to go astray, as well as no will. The priest and the Levite will probably be excommunicated, but the philanthropist is too busy with wounded and dying humanity to be in any danger from theological riddles and metaphysical enigmas. From his continually widening observation of human nature, he may be induced to ignore some of the faded nostrums of traditional quackery, but his heart will be sound and his faith strong. Seeing far into man, he will love his Maker more. Christ seldom made inquiry into the opinions of his disciples, but he never failed to keep them up to a large-hearted practice. When he did inquire into their opinions, it was always to know how they stood in relation to himself, and just in proportion as the disciples saw God in him, did he corroborate their judgment by pronouncing it a divine revelation. The education of the philanthropic element in his church members was Christ’s main concern. We do not know that he ever so much as named Adam and Eve, or that he drew any subtle distinctions, or laid down any precise definitions in reference to supralapsarianism (the position that God’s chosen were selected prior to the encroachment of sin into the nature of mankind) or prevenient grace (a divine grace that precedes human decision); but we do know that he drew up such a list of guests as probably never assembled at any board before his time; that he commended the poor, the lame, the maimed, the blind, to the special care of his members; that, with the most practical sarcasm, he measured the rich man by his clothes and his dinner (“clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day”), and sent the angels to carry the beggar to Abraham’s bosom. Christ’s philanthropy never failed, it never yellowed, or dropped as if winter were approaching. He was the divine teacher of philanthropy; by which is meant not official intermeddling about poor-rates, provision-ventilation and workhouse discipline, but simple hearty, brotherly love of man as man in all zones and all ages. As such a teacher Christ taught the doctrine of the Fall more fully than if he had discussed it in daily discourses upon the garden of Eden. He never said, Lift a man up, without recognizing the Fall; he never expatiated upon “the lost” without going back to early events: he said nothing about the Adamic apostasy, but spent every moment of his life in seeking to reclaim apostates. This was the wisdom which cometh down from above.

Two settled and unchangeable principles thus come up as including the idea of the church—love to Christ and love to man. Whoever has experienced this love is in Christ’s kingdom a living member; he hath eternal life. This dual love is another illustration of the dual life of Christ. As that life was divine and human, the life of his members is divine and human also; it is not only purity of heart which sees God, but it is mercy which pities men—not poverty of spirit which claims the kingdom of heaven, but meekness which inherits the earth—not only the mourning which is followed by rest in the soul, but peacemaking which reconciles opposing hearts; it is dual as Christ was dual—weak enough to be bruised on the cross, strong enough to throw off the bondage of the grave.

That men who know the power of this love should seek each other’s fellowship is not merely natural, but necessary. A common faith and a common philanthropy bring them into visible union; mark them off from all other men, giving them a luster which makes them the light of the world, a pungency which makes them as the salt of the earth, an elevation best represented by “a city set on a hill.” Their visible union causes them to be known as “the church,” in an inferior sense to that already named, and those whom they have left are known as “the world.” Speaking of his disciples in one of his prayers, Christ specially marks this distinction: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world;” in it, yet above it—in the form of servants, yet in the spirit of mastery. In early days the disciples were known to one another by endearing terms which our materialistic civilization can hardly use without a significant hesitation; they were “saints,” “brethren,” “servants of Jesus Christ,” “beloved in the Lord;” they were called a “royal priesthood,” a “peculiar people,” “temples of the Holy Ghost.” What wonder, then, if visible union should be a necessity? On lower conditions men enter into organization: artists unite; merchants “do congregate;” philosophers shut out the common people; bankers have their guilds; lawyers their inns; and savans their esoteric circles. Why should men with a common faith and a common philanthropy remain apart?  When we have been in a foreign country, unable to speak the language, ignorant of all the customs, and have incidentally heard a fellow traveler speak in our own tongue, has not the surprised and thankful heart almost compelled us to claim acquaintance on the common ground of nationality, or identity of speech? Some such feeling as this must have been largely experienced by the first adherents of Christ; an accent might discover them, an allusion might bring them into mutual embrace. If such usual conditions do not now elicit such warm demonstration, is it to our credit if the deep emotion of genuine brotherly affection has subsided?

To be continued . . .