poet or musician in order to perceive what true poetry or music is. Though unable to do the work of a prophet, all who were of the truth were qualified to "receive a prophet in the name of a prophet"-and share in his reward. "All who were of the truth"-for did not the Master himself say that these, and not only official teachers or preachers, are they who hear his voice? No matter how unschooled or downtrodden, they may know him and walk in the very light of God. It was of such as these, indeed, that the first Christian congregations were, to a large extent, composed. "Not many wise after the flesh, not many noble." Slaves, children of barbarians, common people, these, converted to Christ, seem for the most part to have made up the churches to which the chief of the Apostles ministered. And yet what potentiality of spiritual knowledge he was able to see in them all! So he prays for them: "That your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;" "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened;" "That ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.' What more could he have desired for the teachers themselves than he did repeatedly ask of God for their congregations of Christian believers, worshipers, hearers? 993 As a matter of fact, the gift of speaking God's word would be fruitless and vain without its complement, the hearer's gift of recognizing that spoken word. It would fall dead upon his ears. Only he that has ears can hear: only he that is "spiritual" can "judge." But did not our Lord bid his disciples "judge not?" Truly so; and at the same time to "beware of false prophets," who should be known by "their fruits." Accordingly the Christian. people, while admonished by their apostolic teachers to "despise not prophesyings," were at the same time bidden to "prove all *Eph. i. 17. Col. i. 19. 1 Cor. ii. 15. "Matt. vii. 1, 15, 16. 1Phil. i. 9. things" and "hold fast that which is good." They must "prove the spirits, whether they are of God," and were commended for trying "them who call themselves apostles and they are not," and finding them false. To some of them had been given a special gift of the "discerning of spirits." To them all had been given somewhat of this spiritual discernment: "Let the prophets speak by two or three, and let the others discern (dakpívw, discriminate, judge)." The Apostle Paul specifically commends the exercise of their personal judgment with reference to certain of his own teachings and counsels." It was their responsibility, which they could not blamelessly lay aside. It was their right, which could not righteously be wrested from them. 995 Thus, then, has it been with those whom God has sent forth to tell in living speech his word of life, in the successive generations of the Church. They are also the sent ones of Christ's people. This is their truest ordination. They are "tried, examined, and admitted" into their ministry, either directly or through representatives, by the Christian congregation. Their official ministrations, let it ever be remembered, are not necessary to originate a church. Only the presence of "the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus," is required or sufficient for that. Such, indeed, is the declared condition where the words "catholic church" appear for the first time in Christian literature: "Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church (ή καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία). It is true now, even as in the beginning. And just as such a church, true and therefore catholic, is authorized, so far as it shares in the mind of Christ, to hold the power of the "keys," so likewise is it authorized to approve or refuse those who would be received by it as witnessbearers and ministers of the gospel. (3) It is evangelical. The all-inclusive truth with which it has been intrusted is the good news of Divine redeeming grace. Knowledge, through Him who could say, "He that hath seen me 11 Thess. v. 21. 21 John iv. I. Rev. ii. 2. "I Cor. xiv. 29. 'Ignatius, "To the Smyrnæans," 8. hath seen the Father;" peace, through the blood of his cross; love, from its fountain in the self-giving of God since the foundation of the world; life, in Him who died for us and rose again, himself the Resurrection and the Life: these, even from apostolic days, have been its distinct and distinctive messages. In the twentieth century, as in the first, the Christ of the Cross -reconciliation and communion with God in him-is its theme. This is the message that I bring, A message angels fain would sing: "Oh, be ye reconciled," thus saith your Lord and King, (4) It is a succession in spiritual gifts. Because to communicate through speech to the assembled congregation this living word of God, calls for the gift of preaching. "And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith." Not for the administration of the sacraments, divinely ordained though they are, were men called with a special calling and dowered with a special gift in the apostolic churches. But there has been such a gift of preaching, from the days of the Apostles and their fellow-ministers until now. Therefore it is the office of a preacher, in season and out of season, according to the ability that God gives him, to speak "to the people all the words of this Life." He was indeed a gospeler who wrote out of the fullness of his heart: "Necessity is laid upon me; for woe is me if I preach not the gospel. I have a stewardship intrusted to me."" And so likewise are those who have their succession from him. (5) It is apostolic. The name is true. Because it connotes not only essentially the same inner vocation, the same truth of redemption, and the same gift of preaching that came to the Apostles who saw the Lord, but also essentially the same spirit of love and labor that was in them. When Francis Asbury, the pioneer Protestant bishop of the New World, would tell upon what he 21 Cor. ix. 16, 17. 'Rom. xii. 6-8. rested his authority as a superintendent, or bishop, in the Church, he dared to say, among other things: "Because the signs of an apostle have been seen in me." Probably no one who knew his career would have been disposed to doubt this fact. And was it not the best possible proof of a truly divine authority? To brave all dangers, to practice all self-denials, to spend one's strength from youth to old age in prayer and the ministry of the word, to care through long years for the widely separated churches, homeless yet happy, as poor yet making many rich, till one is able to look in the faces of fellow-Christians in many regions and say, “The seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord”—it is this spirit of love and labor, rather than any ordaining hands, that will mark one's office and ministry as genuinely apostolic. Moreover, this apostolic succession, evangelic not priestly, spiritual not legal, catholic not exclusive, scriptural rather than ecclesiastic, proclaiming the complete brotherhood of all who trust the one Christ as Lord and Saviour, makes not for division but for unity in the Church of God. XIII. THE BISHOP: FROM DIOCESAN TO POPE. THE propension toward external catholic unity was not satisfied with the little bishoprics of the second and third centuries. Might it not find a common center, here and there, about which not congregations but bishoprics themselves could be grouped? At any rate, it began to feel its way toward some such larger embodiment. Much more naturally than the deacons' office called for an archdeacon and the presbyters' office for an archpresbyter, did the bishops' office call for an archbishop. I. ORIGIN OF THE ARCHBISHOP. In response to such a demand, the provincial councils rendered an important service. For by the beginning of the third century these councils had begun to be held with some degree of frequency, and were attended by all the bishops of a province. Reasonably enough the chief city of a province, the metropolis, was the chosen place of meeting. And who should preside over their proceedings? At first the senior bishop of those in attendance was frequently elected president; but afterwards it came to be the custom to select for the presidency the pastor of the church in which the council met. So this host of the council, this bishop of the church in the metropolis, acquired a distinction among his fellow-bishops, and after a time, developing as he did into the metropolitan, or archbishop,' became a distinct center of unity for the province. For example, we see Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, calling 'The metropolitan usually went by the name of archbishop, but the title of archbishop was given also to the patriarch when he arose, and indeed it seems to have been somewhat of a floating title. But "the distinction between an archbishop and a metropolitan has died out, and no difference except that which is nominal exists between them." (Blunt, "Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology," Art. "Archbishop.") In the East the name now regularly used is metropolitan; in the West, archbishop. |