THE

REFORMED CHURCH REVIEW

No. 1.-JANUARY-1907.

I.

WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

BY THE REV. THEODORE F. HERMAN.

But

It is one of the incidental proofs of the solidarity of the human race in its essential longings and aspirations that long before Jesus began His ministry with a sermon on The Kingdom of Heaven, Plato, in his " Conception of the Ideal State,” sought to describe the perfect sphere of the perfect life. the magnificent conception of the Civitas Platonica was rudely shattered by the onslaught of the Roman legions. One after another the Greek city-states fell before the military strength of Rome, and in the hour of her political disappointment Greece, with chastened moral insight, realized the ethical insufficiency of the Platonic State, and the intrinsic worth of the individual. Plato's fair vision was supplanted by one still glorious, the Stoic dream of a world-state, comprising all races and nationalities in the bond of their common humanity. And the magnificent Roman Empire seemed to be the very incarnation of this dream of the Stoics. It was powerful and just and sheltered all races within its pale. But the inner life did not at all correspond to the majesty and splendor of its external form. Outwardly it stood without seam or fissure, but inwardly it was rent by many disintegrating forces. Rome did not fulfill the promise of Plato nor realize the dream of

more

the Stoics. The vision of the City of God lived in yearning hearts, but not in the fabric of history. Its empire is vaster, its life nobler, its rule gentler, and its sovereignty more compelling than was that of Rome.

Then Jesus Christ came into a waiting world with His gospel of a humane divinity and a divine humanity. His central theme was the conception of the Kingdom of Heaven in which loyalty to a divine Father took the place of obedience to a world emperor, and in which the old marks of citizenship were supplanted by the principle of brotherly love. In the fire of this new enthusiasm for God and humanity, kindled by Christ, the foundations of the City of God were laid. Out of this magnificent conception of the Kingdom of God the Christian Church has arisen, whether naturally, supernaturally, or unnaturally, remains to be seen.

If for a moment, divesting ourselves of our critical faculties, and of our historical sense, we view the Church as a given entity, approbation and condemnation are alike easy. Seen with Catholic eyes, there is nothing great besides. Transcending all family, social and national limits, it contemplates a community as wide as the race. Here the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant meet together in the love and service of one Lord who is the Maker and Head of them all. "Here, too, the spiritual forces of humanity centre; the Church is the great, universal confederation for all purposes that look to man's upbuilding, the communion of men freed from the limitations of race, of nation and condition and bound by a common love to a common work for a common aim and that aim the highest." Thus viewed, the Church is in truth the shadow of a large rock in a weary land. There is no other cause nor institution which is at all com: parable with it. On the other hand, seen with critical eyes, there are chapters in her history which fill the impartial observer with shame and indignation. But the purpose of this paper is not to eulogize nor to criticise, but to seek to understand the Church of history, her origin and her development,

her essence and her form, the forces that made her and marred her.

The origin of the Christian Church dates back to Jesus. He laid the foundation upon which the ages have built a studendous superstructure. Hence, when we want to find the constitutive principle of the Christian Church we do not listen to a papal encyclical nor to Canon Gore in "The Church and the Ministry," but to Jesus in the Gospels. We do not seek the justification of an existing church by reading the pages of history backwards, but we seek the explanation of the created society by a return to the creative personality. The historian does not accept the Church at its own estimate, nor grant the claim that the Church, as a divine institution, is lifted out of and above the stream of history. For him its orders and systems and usages are the results of historical processes and legitimate matters for inquiry. Not justification is his aim, nor condemnation, but explanation. Our topic, therefore, naturally groups itself under three divisions: The Church of Jesus, the Church of History, and the Church of the Future. Manifestly, within the narrow scope of a paper one can do but scant justice to so vast a topic. Because of its fundamental importance I shall treat the first part of this paper at some length, and the other two parts, briefly.

I. The Church of Jesus.-We are to inquire in what sense is Jesus Christ the founder of the Church, and in what terms did He conceive and describe it. It is plain even to the most casual reader of the Gospels that the watchword of Jesus, the key-note of His teaching and preaching is The Kingdom of Heaven. That is the theme of His initiatory sermon, and it remains the constant element in His brief ministry. The establishment and development of this kingdom in the hearts of men is the aim of His life. The idea of the Kingdom of Heaven was not new. Prophetic in its origin, it had formed a large element in the national life and Messianic hope of the Jews, and in Jesus' time it had wide currency. Jesus, however, took the old thought form and filled it with a new life.

To Him the Kingdom of Heaven was not national in its form nor political in its contents; it was the spiritual reign of God in the actual life of men. Negatively it involved the deliverance of men from sin; positively, the doing by men of the will of God; individually, it meant confidence in a Father, collectively, a fraternal spirit of love in all the relations of life; temporally it meant peace and joy, eternally, blessedness. I am aware that Christ did not use the term Kingdom of God with a mathematical consistency. "Sometimes it referred to the Divine rule in the human heart, and sometimes to a company of men under the Divine rule; in certain passages the term 'kingdom' denotes the blessings which come to those who are doers of the Divine will, and again, in others, the reference is to the final abode of the blessed." To Jesus this term is not a dogmatic formula, but rather the symbol of a rich and many-sided truth; but it is equally true, that the constant element in the varied use of the term is the thought of the Divine rule in the heart of man. Preeminently Jesus' conception of the kingdom was ethical and spiritual.

Unique in its positive contents, this religion of Jesus was unique also on the negative side. It was marked by a total lack of symbols, sacrifices, ceremonies and officials. While from the beginning of His career, Jesus believed that He was instituting a work which was to be universal in its scope, and while early in His ministry He selected certain men to be His more immediate companions and disciples and, ultimately, His successors in the work, yet He never effected the fixed and formal organization of this small brotherhood for the propagation of the Kingdom. If Jesus' religion had been a new philosophy it could have been advanced by schools and their logic; if it had been an institution or an organization, authority and force might have aided it. But it was a new life in the hearts of men and therefore it could only be spread by living contact; life begets life, as natural life goes out from man to man, so the eternal life was to follow the same channel. Hence Jesus spoke no word and did no act that implied the

necessity of an official organization and priesthood for His new society of men. His religion was to be personal and ethical, not ceremonial and sacerdotal. In His kingdom there was to be a common priesthood based on a common faith. “He was the founder of the church as a spiritual agency in the world, and the one law of its propogation and development was personal witness and personal contact." The DISCIPLES were the light of the world, and the salt of the earth. Not sacraments nor ceremonies, not priests nor popes, but the men who had accepted Him. They were to bear witness of what they had seen and heard. Thus Jesus had won them and thus they were to win others. Jesus had come to them personally and had testified what He knew of the Father. By His life and words He had convinced them that He was their divinely appointed Saviour. And as He had come to them, so He sent them to others. Through them the personal influence of God was to go from individual to individual, even as the flavor of salt is diffused from particle to particle, or as light is passed along a signal line from torch to torch, each lighting the next. When the disciples, by their intimate association with Jesus had been formed into the nucleus of this kingdom of heaven, and they were ready for their mission, this was the message which Jesus gave them "As ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," and when at length the consummation of human history is accomplished, it shall be written in this sentence "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." It is a most striking and significant fact that in the discourses of Jesus concerning the nature and development of the kingdom there is this complete lack of official, sacerdotal and sacramental features. Here is the unparalleled example of a religion without priests, a church with no outward organization, a kingdom of holy men constituted without any ecclesiastical machinery or sacerdotal offices, extended not by magical or mechanical agencies, but by the dynamic of a new life, the persuasive influence of spiritual character.