_________________________________________________________________

           Title: The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries
      Creator(s): Lindsay, Thomas Martin (1843-1914)
   CCEL Subjects: All; History;
      LC Call no: BV648
   LC Subjects:

   Practical theology

   Ecclesiastical theology Including the Church, church and state, etc.

   Church Polity
     _________________________________________________________________

                          THE CHURCH AND THE MINISTRY
                            IN THE EARLY CENTURIES

   The Eighteenth Series of 

   The Cunningham Lectures

   by

   Thomas Martin Lindsay, D.D.

   Principal of the Glasgow College of

   the United Free Church of Scotland

   Hodder and Stoughton
   London
   1903
     _________________________________________________________________

PREFACE

   The aim of these Lectures is to pourtray the organized life of the Christian
   Society as that was lived in the thousands of little communities formed by
   the proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord during the first three centuries.

   The method of description has been to select writings which seemed to reveal
   that life most clearly, and to group round the central sources of
   information illustrative evidence, contemporary or other. The principle of
   selection has been to take, as the central authorities, those writings
   which, when carefully examined, reveal the greatest number of details. Thus,
   the Epistles of St. Paul, especially the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
   have been chosen as furnishing the greatest number of facts going to form a
   picture of the life of the Christian Society during the first century, and
   the material derived from the other canonical writings such as the Acts of
   the Apostles, the Apocalypse and the Pastoral Epistles, have been arranged
   around them. Similarly the Didache, the Sources of the Apostolic Canons and
   the Epistles of Ignatius have been selected for the light they throw on the
   life and work of the Church during the second century. The Canons of
   Hippolytus, supplemented by the writings of Irenaeus and of Tertullian, have
   furnished the basis for the description of the organization during the
   first, and the Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage for that of the second half
   of the third century.

   The method used has the disadvantage of making necessary some repetitions,
   which the form of Lectures rendered the more inevitable; but it puts the
   reader in possession of the contemporary evidence in the simplest way.

   Quotations from the original authorities have been given in English for the
   most part, and, as a rule, the translations have been taken from well known
   versions—from the Ante-Nicene Library, from the late Bishop Lightfoot’s
   translations of Clement of Rome and of Ignatius, and from Messrs. Hitchcock
   and Brown’s version of the Didache. This has been done after consultation
   with friends whose advice seemed to be too valuable to be neglected.

   Dr. Moberly, in his eminently suggestive book, Ministerial Priesthood, has
   warned all students of early Church History to beware of mental
   presuppositions, unchallenged assumptions, hypotheses or postulates. The
   warning has been taken with all seriousness, even when the perusal of his
   book has suggested the thought that mental presuppositions, like sins, are
   more readily recognized in our neighbours than in ourselves. I feel bound to
   admit that three assumptions or postulates may be found underlying these
   lectures. Whether they are right or wrong the reader must judge.

   My first postulate is this. I devoutly believe that there is a Visible
   Catholic Church of Christ consisting of all those throughout the world who
   visibly worship the same God and Father, profess their faith in the same
   Saviour, and are taught by the same Holy Spirit; but I do not see any
   Scriptural or even primitive warrant for insisting that catholicity must
   find visible expression in a uniformity of organization, of ritual of
   worship, or even of formulated creed. This visible Church Catholic of Christ
   has had a life in the world historically continuous; but the ground of this
   historical continuity does not necessarily exist in any one method of
   selecting and setting apart office-bearers who rule in the Church; its basis
   is the real succession of the generations of faithful followers of their
   Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. It is with devout thankfulness that I can
   make this assumption with perfect honesty of heart and of head, because it
   relieves me from the necessity—sad, stern and even hateful it must seem to
   many pious souls who feel themselves under its power—of unchurching and of
   excluding from the “covenanted” mercies of God, all who do not accept that
   form of Church government which, to my mind, is truest to scriptural
   principles and most akin to the ecclesiastical organization of the early
   centuries.

   My second postulate concerns the ministry: There is and must be a valid
   ministry of some sort in the churches which are branches of this one Visible
   Catholic Church of Christ; but I do not think that the fact that the Church
   possesses an authority which is a direct gift from God necessarily means
   that the authority must exist in a class or caste of superior office-bearers
   endowed with a grace and therefore with a power “specific, exclusive and
   efficient,” and that it cannot be delegated to the ministry by the Christian
   people. I do not see why the thought that the authority comes from
   “above,” a dogmatic truth, need in any way Interfere with the conception
   that all official ecclesiastical power is representative and delegated to
   the officials by the membership and that it has its divine source in the
   presence of Christ promised arid bestowed upon His people and diffused
   through the membership of the Churches. Therefore when the question is put:
   “Must ministerial character be in all cases conferred from above, or may it
   sometimes, and with equal validity, be evolved from below?” it appears to me
   that a fallacy lurks in the antithesis. “From below” is used in the sense
   “from the membership of the Church,” and the inference suggested by the
   contrast is that what comes “from below,” i.e. from the membership of the
   Church, cannot come “from above,” i.e. cannot be of divine origin, warrant
   and authority. Why not? May the Holy Spirit not use the membership of the
   Church as His instrument? Is there no real abiding presence of Christ among
   His people? Is not this promised Presence something which belongs to the
   sphere of God and may it not be the source of an authority which is “from
   above”? The fallacious antithesis has apparently given birth to a
   formula,—that no valid ministry can be evolved from the membership of the
   Christian congregation; and this formula has been treated as expressing a
   dogmatic truth which has been compared with the truth of the dogma of the
   Incarnation, and which has been used as a guiding principle in the
   interpretation of the references in the New Testament writings and in other
   early Christian literature to the origin and growth of the Christian
   ministry. Fortified by this supposed dogmatic truth one Anglican divine can
   contentedly rest the Scriptural warrant for the theory of “Apostolic
   Succession” and all the sad and stern practical consequences he deduces from
   it, on an hypothesis and on a detail in a parable, and another can find
   evidence for the same “gigantic figment” in a statement of Clement of Rome
   which describes the earliest missionaries of the Christian Church doing what
   missionaries of all kinds, from those of the Church of England to those of
   the Society of Friends, have done in all generations to secure the
   well-being and continuance of the communities of believers who have been
   converted to the faith of Jesus.

   My third postulate belongs to an entirely different sphere from the two
   already mentioned, but it has been so much in my mind that it ought to be
   mentioned. It is that analogies in organization illustrative of the life of
   the primitive Christian communities can be more easily and more safely found
   on the mission fields of our common Christianity than among the details of
   the organized life of the long established Churches of Christian Europe. In
   the early centuries and on the Mission field we are studying origins. It was
   my good fortune some years ago to spend twelve months in India, examining
   there the methods, work and results of the Missions of the various branches
   of the Church of Christ. One seemed at times to be transported back to the
   early centuries, to hear and to see what the earliest writers had recounted
   and described. Portions of the Didache, of the Sources of the Apostolic
   Canons, of the Canons of Hippolytus were living practices there. One lived
   among scenes described by Tertullian and by Clement of Alexandria. The
   Arabian Nights tell us of the fortunate possessor of a magic carpet who,
   when seated on his treasure, had only to wish it to be carried anywhere in
   space he desired. Historians might long to be owners of a similar mat to
   carry them anywhen backwards and forwards throughout the past centuries. A
   visit to the Mission field, especially to one among a people of ancient
   civilization who have inherited those original speculations which were the
   fertile soil out of which sprang the earliest Christian Gnosticism, is the
   magic carpet which transports one back to the times of primitive
   Christianity. The visitor sees the simple meaning of many a statement which
   seemed so hard to understand with nothing but the ancient literary record to
   guide him He learns to distrust some of the hard and fast canons of modern
   historical criticism, and to grow somewhat sceptical about the worth of many
   of those “subjective pictures” which some modern critics first construct and
   then use to estimate the date, authorship and intention of ancient
   documents. He learns that the modern western mind cannot so easily gauge the
   oriental ways of thought as it persistently imagines. Modern missionary work
   appears to me to be full of helpful illustrations of the life and
   organization of the early centuries:

   These Lectures are the fruit of long, careful, and, I trust, reverent study
   of the literary remains of the early Christian centuries. The last quarter
   of a century has brought many ancient documents to light which were formerly
   unknown, and these have not been passed over. The extent of my obligations
   to others may be seen in the notes; but the debt owed to such writers as
   Bishop Lightfoot, Professor Harnack and Dr. Hort far exceeds what can be
   acknowledged in such a way.

   I have to express my sense of the great assistance given to me by my old
   friend, the Rev. A. O. Johnston, D.D., who read the lectures in MS., and who
   has also gone over the proofs with great care. The book owes much to his
   labour and to his criticisms.

   THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
     _________________________________________________________________

EXTRACT DECLARATION OF TRUST.

  March 1, 1862.

   I, William Binny Webster, late Surgeon in the H.E.I.C.S., presently residing
   in Edinburgh,—Considering that I feel deeply interested in the success of
   the Free Church College, Edinburgh, and am desirous of advancing the
   Theological Literature of Scotland, and for this end to establish a
   Lectureship similar to those of a like kind connected with the Church of
   England and the Congregational body in England, and that I have made over to
   the General Trustees of the Free Church of Scotland the sum of £2,000
   sterling, in trust, for the purpose of founding a Lectureship in memory of
   the late Reverend William Cunningham, D.D., Principal of the Free Church
   College, Edinburgh, and Professor of Divinity and Church History therein,
   and under the following conditions, namely,—First, The Lectureship shall
   bear the name, and be called, ‘The Cunningham Lectureship.’ Second, The
   Lecturer shall be a Minister or Professor of the Free Church of Scotland,
   and shall hold the appointment for not less than two years, nor more than
   three years, and be entitled for the period of his holding the appointment
   to the income of the endowment as declared by the General Trustees, it being
   understood that the Council after referred to may occasionally appoint a
   Minister or Professor from other denominations, provided this be approved of
   by not fewer than Eight Members of the Council, and it being further
   understood that the Council are to regulate the terms of payment of the
   Lecturer. Third, The Lecturer shall be at liberty to choose his own subject
   within the range of Apologetical, Doctrinal, Controversial, Exegetical,
   Pastoral, or Historical Theology, including what bears on Missions, Home and
   Foreign, subject to the consent of the Council. Fourth, The Lecturer shall
   be bound to deliver publicly at Edinburgh a Course of Lectures on the
   subjects thus chosen at some time immediately preceding the expiry of his
   appointment, and during the Session of the New College, Edinburgh; the
   Lectures to be not fewer than six in number, and to be delivered in presence
   of the Professors and Students under such arrangements as the Council may
   appoint; the Lecturer shall be bound also to print and publish, at his own
   risk, not fewer than 750 copies of the Lectures within a year after their
   delivery, and to deposit three copies of the same in the Library of the New
   College; the form of the publication shall be regulated by the Council.
   Fifth, A Council shall be constituted, consisting of (first) Two Members of
   their own body, to be chosen annually in the month of March, by the Senatus
   of the New College, other than the Principal; (second) Five Members to be
   chosen annually by the General Assembly, in addition to the Moderator of the
   said Free Church of Scotland; together with (third) the Principal of the
   said New College for the time being, the Moderator of the said General
   Assembly for the time being, the Procurator or Law Adviser of the Church,
   and myself the said William Hinny Webster, or such person as I may nominate
   to be my successor: the Principal of the said College to be Convener of the
   Council, and any Five Members duly convened to be entitled to act
   notwithstanding the non-election of others. Sixth, The duties of the Council
   shall be the following:—(first), To appoint the Lecturer and determine the
   period of his holding the appointment, the appointment to be made before the
   close of the Session of College immediately preceding the termination of the
   previous Lecturer’s engagement; (second), To arrange details as to the
   delivery of the Lectures, and to take charge of any additional income and
   expenditure of an incidental kind that may be connected therewith, it being
   understood that the obligation upon the Lecturer is simply to deliver the
   Course of Lectures free of expense to himself. Seventh, The Council shall be
   at liberty, on the expiry of five years, to make any alteration that
   experience may suggest as desirable in the details of this plan, provided
   such alterations shall be approved of by not fewer than Eight Members of the
   Council.
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CONTENTS

   LECTURE I
   THE NEW TESTAMENT CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
   The Promise of the Church (Ecclesia) 3
   Jewish and Greek Meanings of Ecclesia 4
   The Word has its Home in the Pauline Literature 5
   It includes five great Thoughts 5
   i. Fellowship with Christ and with the Brethren 6-9
     St. Paul rings the changes on this Thought 7
     Fellowship with Christ manifested in “gifts” to the Church 8
     Fellowship among Believers implied in the early Names for Christians 9
   ii. Unity 10-15
     Church and Churches 10
     The Unity of the Church a primary Verity of the Christian Faith 13
   iii. The Church is a visible Community 16-24


   It can be seen in every Christian Community large or small for it is an
   ideal Reality
   16
     This Ideal ought to be made manifest 18
     St. Paul’s way of manifesting the Unity of the Church of Christ 20
     His leading thought was “fellowship” (koinōnia) 20
     How he grouped his Churches 21
     The great “Collection” 22
     The Methods of the Twelve 23
   iv. The Church has Authority 24-33


   The Promise of Authority made to St. Peter, to the Twelve and to the whole
   Company of the Believers
   25
     How these Promises were interpreted by the primitive Church 32


   The Self-government and Independence of the Apostolic Churches
   32
   v. The Church is a Sacerdotal Society 33-37
     The ideal Israel 33
     The sacerdotal Character belongs to the whole Membership 34
     Luther on the sacerdotal Character of the Church 35
     No Idea of a maimed Sacerdotalism in primitive Times 36
   LECTURE II
   A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN APOSTOLIC TIMES
   The local Churches in primitive Times met in private Houses 41
   The Brethren had three Kinds of Meetings 43
   i. The Meeting for Edification 44
     The Service and the Arrangement of the Parts 44
     Almost unlimited Freedom in Worship 49
   ii. The Meeting for Thanksgiving (Eucharistic) 50
     The Details indistinctly given 50
     May be reconstructed 52
   iii. The Congregational Business Meeting 54


   It was the Centre of the Unity and the Seat of the Independence of the local
   Church
   55
     It settled even the civil Disputes among the Brethren 55
     Every local Church was a little self-governing Republic 57

   Leadership within the Christian Communities had a Distinctive Character, and
   implied Service and the possession of “Gifts”
   62
   Traces of a double Ministry, the prophetic and the local 64

   These Ministries quite separate, but the Men composing them might belong to
   both
   66
   LECTURE III
   THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH

   The Christian Community is a Body of which the Spirit of Christ is the Soul
   69
   The “Gift” to “speak the Word of God” the most prized 70

   Its Complement was the “Gift” to “discern” or test those who “spoke the Word
   of God”
   70

   The prophetic Ministry was three-fold, Apostles, Prophets and Teachers
   73

   This three-fold Ministry is to be traced throughout the Church of the first
   and second Centuries
   74
   i. Apostles were the Missionaries who founded the Churches 75
     Various Classes of Apostles 76
     Their Number increased during the earlier Decades 82
     The wider and narrower uses of the Word “Apostle” 85
     The special Character of Apostolic Work and Authority 87
     St. Paul as the Type of an Apostle 88
   ii.

   Prophets were found in every Christian Community, and sometimes wandered
   from one to another
   90
     What Prophecy was 93
     Prophecy and Ecstasy 94
     Prophecy and visions 94
     Prophets were not Office-bearers 95


   They exercised a great deal of influence in matters of discipline, and had a
   unique place in the restoration of the lapsed
   96
     Wandering Prophets and the Firstfruits 97
     Their Claims were to be tested by the “Gift” of Discernment 99
     False Prophets 100
   iii. Teachers, their special Work 103
   The Prophets of the Old and of the Now Testaments compared 106
   LECTURE IV
   THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURY—CREATING ITS MINISTRY

   Traces of several Types of Organization in the New Testament
   113
   The Seven of Acts vi. and the Jewish Village Community. 115
   Elders in Churches outside Palestine 118

   The Supremacy of James in Jerusalem, and a Series of Rulers who were of the
   Kindred of Jesus
   119
   Office-bearers in the Pauline Gentile Churches 121
   The Prohistamenei and the Relation of Patron and Client. 123
   The heathen Confraternities and their Organization 125
   The Jewish Synagogues outside Palestine and their Organization. 129

   The Christian Churches did not copy either the Synagogue or the
   Confraternities
   131
   They had an external Resemblance to both Synagogue and Confraternity 132
   The Organization in the Pastoral Epistles 137

   The Information given in the Pastoral Epistles is complementary to what is
   to be found in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul
   148
   Names for Office-bearers in early Christian Literature 152
   Episcopus designates the Kind of Work done and is not the Name of an Office
   153
   The Meaning and Origin of the Christian “Elders” 153

   The Churches in the first Century were ruled by a College of
   Presbyter-bishops who were assisted by a Body of Deacons
   154

   The Unity of the Church never forgotten in the Independence of the local
   Churches
   155
   Note on “Presbyter” and “Bishop”

   Harnack’s Theory that Bishops were distinct from Presbyters from the first
   157
   The Witness of Clement 159
   The Identity of the New Testament “Presbyters” and “Bishops” 163
   LECTURE V
   THE CHURCHES OF THE SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES—CHANGING THEIR MINISTRY
   The Ministry of the first Century was changed during the second 169
   The Ministry in the Didaché 171
     The Congregational Meeting 173
     The Prophetic Ministry 174
     Elected Office-bearers 175
   The Ministry in the Sources of the Apostolic Canons 177


   The smallest Christian Communities to be organized under Bishop or Pastor,
   Elders and Deacons
   178
     A Ministry of Women 181
     The Reader and uneducated Bishops 182


   The Document shows a three-fold Ministry in a transitional Stage
   183
   The Letters of Ignatius 186
     Their Characters and Contents 187
     They plead for Unity through Obedience to the Office‑bearers 190


   The Organization they bear Witness to: a Bishop, a Session of Elders and a
   Body of Deacons, which form one whole
   196
     They reveal a three-fold Ministry but not Episcopacy 198
     The Authority of the Bishop or Pastor limited 198
     The Powers of the Congregational Meeting 200

   An unpaid Ministry explains how the smallest Body of Christians could have a
   complete Organization
   200

   The Organization of Bishop, Session of Elders and body of Deacons became
   almost universal within the Empire
   204

   The Reasons for the Change from a two-fold collegiate Ministry to a
   three-fold Ministry and the Paths by which the Change advanced can only be
   guessed
   205
   The Church has always the Power to change its Ministry 210

   LECTURE VI
   THE FALL OF THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY AND THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLT

   The Work of Edification began to pass from the prophetic Ministry to the
   ordinary Office-bearers
   213

   The Causes which led to the Fall of the prophetic Ministry are not
   specifically known but may be guessed
   217
   The Need to make a combined Stand against Heresies 217
   The Gnostic Treatment of Christianity 218
   Marcion’s Canon, Creed, and Churches 219
   Irenaeus voiced the Need which his Time felt 221

   The Guarantee for Christian Truth is to be found in the Succession of
   Office-bearers in the Churches from the Times of the Apostles
   223
   Office-bearers were supposed to have a charisma veritatis 227
   Effect of this on the prophetic Ministry 228
   The Growth of a Desire to come to some Accommodation with the Empire 229
   The Apologists 230
   The Deterioration of Prophecy 233
   Protests against the silent Movement in the Church 235

   The Phrygian Movement the Centre and Exaggeration of what was affecting the
   whole of the Churches
   236
   Montanism properly speaking was conservative 238
   Proof from Montanist Prophecy 239
   The Break with the “great” Church 243
   The Fate of the later Montanists 243
   The Organization of the Churches after the Montanists were outside 244
   What the Canons of Hippolytus tell us 245
   A three-fold Ministry of Bishop, Elders, and Deacons 245

   Qualifications, Choice and Ordination (which might be done by an Elder) of
   Bishops
   246
   Elders and Bishops were theoretically equal but practically very distinct
   247
   The two Meetings for public Worship 250
   The Meeting for Exhortation 251
   The Eucharistic Service 252
   The Distribution of the Offerings 255

   Comparison between the Organization of the Churches in the Beginning of the
   third Century and those of modern Times
   259

   LECTURE VII
   MINISTRY CHANGING TO PRIESTHOOD

   In the Course of the third Century the Conceptions of the local and of the
   universal Church began to change
   265

   The Changes led in the End to the Idea that a local Church was a Body of
   Christians obedient to their Bishop and that the universal Church was the
   Federation of these obedient Communities
   266
   The Phases in this Change 266

   The novel Position and Autocracy of the Bishop needed a Sanction which was
   found in the legal Fiction of an Apostolic Succession
   278
   The Idea first emerged in the Quarrels between Hippolytus and Calixtus 280
   The Work and Influence of Cyprian 283
   The Decian Persecution 287
   The Lapsed 290
   The “Authority” of the Martyr confronts the “Authority” of the Bishop 295
   Cyprian’s Theory of the Position and Power of the Bishop 299
   The Bishop is the Representative of Christ and has the Right to forgive Sins
   305

   Cyprian’s maimed Sacerdotalism: the Bishop a unique Priest and the Eucharist
   a unique Sacrifice
   307

   Cyprian’s Method of exhibiting the universality of the visible Church by
   Means of Councils
   313

   His Theory confronted by a Roman one which was in the End triumphant in the
   West
   317
   LECTURE VIII
   THE ROMAN STATE RELIGION AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH

   The Instrument for effecting the Grouping of federated Churches round the
   definite Centres was the Council or Synod
   323
   Sohm’s Theory of the Origin and Meaning of Synods 327

   The Synod was really the Application of the Congregational Meeting to a
   wider ecclesiastical Sphere
   334

   This democratic Principle of Organization confronted with an imperialist
   one; the two subsisted for long side by side
   335

   Councils became a regular part of the Organization of the Churches before
   the End of the third Century
   336
   The same Period saw other Changes 337

   In the more compact Organization of the federated Churches the Roman
   Organization for the State pagan Religion was largely copied
   340
   The religious Reforms of Augustus 341
   The Worship of the Emperors 342
   The Organization of the Priesthood of the imperial Cult 348
   This Organization copied within the Christian Churches 350
   The Churches also copied the State Temple Service 353
   The Church thus organized was still a Federation of Churches 358

   Numerous and flourishing Christian Churches existed which did not belong to
   the Federation
   359

   After the Conversion of Constantine these outside Christians were vehemently
   persecuted by the State, which only acknowledged the federated Churches
   359
   APPENDIX

   Sketch of the History of modern Controversy about the Office‑bearers in the
   primitive Christian Churches
   364
   INDEXES

   Index of References to Contemporary Authorities, Canonical and Non-canonical
   379
   Index of Names and Subjects 386
     _________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I

  THE NEW TESTAMENT CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH

   And I say also unto thee, that thou art Petros, and on this petra I will
   build My Church (Ecclesia); and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against
   it.” [1] Our Lord was far from Galilee and farther from Jerusalem when He
   uttered these words. He was sojourning in an almost wholly pagan land. The
   rocks overhanging the path were covered with the mementos of a licentious
   cult; and in the neighbouring city of Caesarea Philippi Herod Philip had
   built and consecrated a temple to the Emperor Augustus, who was there
   worshipped as a god. [2] It was among scenes which showed the lustful
   passions of man’s corrupt heart and the statecraft of Imperial Rome seating
   themselves on the throne of God, that Jesus made to His followers the
   promise which He has so marvellously fulfilled.

   The word translated Church is Ecclesia—a word that had a history both
   theocratic and democratic, and that came trailing behind it memories both to
   the Jews who were then listening to Him, and to the Greeks, who, at a later
   period, received His Gospel. To the Jew, the Ecclesia had been the assembly
   of the congregation of Israel, [3] summoned to meet at the door of the
   Tabernacle of Jehovah by men blowing silver trumpets. To the Greek the
   Ecclesia was the sovereign assembly of the free Greek city-state, [4]
   summoned by the herald blowing his horn through the streets of the town. To
   the followers of Jesus it was to be the congregation of the redeemed and
   therefore of the free, summoned by His heralds to continually appear in the
   presence of their Lord, who was always to be in the midst of them. It was to
   be a theocratic democracy.

   The New, if it is to be lasting, must always have its roots in the Old; and
   the phrase “My Ecclesia” recalled the past and foretold the future. The
   roots were the memories the word brought both to Jew and to Greek; and the
   promise and the potency of the future lay in the word “My.” The Ecclesia had
   been the congregation of Jehovah; it was in the future, without losing
   anything of what it had possessed, to become the congregation of Jesus the
   Christ. Its heralds, like James, the brother of our Lord, could apply to it
   the Old Testament promises, and see in its construction the fulfilment of
   the saying of Amos about the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David; [5] or,
   like St. Paul, could call it the “Israel of God,” and repeat concerning it
   the prayer of the Psalm, “Remember thine ecclesia, which Thou hast purchased
   of old, which Thou hast redeemed to be the tribe of Thine inheritance.” [6]
   It had been the self-governing Greek republic, ruled by elected
   office-bearers; hereafter the communities of Christians, which were to be
   the ecclesiae, were to be little self-governing societies where the
   individual rights and responsibilities of the members would blend
   harmoniously with the common good of all.

   The word with its memories and promises appealed to none of our Lord’s “Sent
   Ones” more strongly than to St. Paul, who was at once an “Hebrew of the
   Hebrews,” and the apostle to the Gentiles. The term “ecclesia” has its home
   in the Pauline literature. [7] It is met with 110 times within the New
   Testament, and of these 86 occur in the Epistles of St. Paul and in the Acts
   of the Apostles. We naturally turn to the writings of St. Paul to aid us in
   expounding the thought which is contained in the term. When we do so we are
   entitled to say that the conception contains at least five different ideas
   which embody the essential features of the “Church of Christ.”

   The New Testament Church is fellowship with Jesus and with the brethren
   through Him; this fellowship is permeated with a sense of unity; this united
   fellowship is to manifest itself in a visible society; this visible society
   has bestowed upon it by our Lord a divine authority; and it is to be a
   sacerdotal society. These appear to be the five outstanding elements in the
   New Testament conception of the Church of Christ.

   1. The Church of Christ is a fellowship. It is a fellowship with Jesus
   Christ; that is the divine element in it. It is a fellowship with the
   brethren; that is the human element in it. The Rock on which the Church was
   to be built was a man confessing—not the man apart from his confession, as
   Romanists insist, nor the confession apart from the man, as many Protestants
   argue. It was a man in whom long companionship with Jesus and the revelation
   from the Father had created a personal trust in His Messianic mission; [8]
   and the faith which had grown out of the fellowship had the mysterious power
   of making the fellowship which had created it more vivid and real; for
   faith, in its primitive sense of personal trust, is fellowship become
   self-conscious. Faith is what makes fellow-ship know itself to be
   fellowship, and not haphazard social intercourse.

   The faith of Peter, seer as he was into divine mysteries, and prophet as he
   was, able to utter what he had seen, did not involve a very adequate
   apprehension of the fellowship he had confessed. He knew so little about its
   real meaning that shortly after his confession he made a suggestion which
   would have destroyed it; [9] a thought prompted by the Evil One succeeded
   the revelation from the Father—so strangely and swiftly do inspirations of
   God and temptations of the Devil succeed each other in the minds of men. The
   sad experience of Peter has been shared by the Church in all generations. He
   did not cease to be the Rock-Man in consequence; nor has the promise failed
   the Church which was founded on him and on his confession, although it has
   shared his weakness and sin.

   St. Paul rings the changes on this thought of fellowship with Jesus which
   makes the Church. The churches addressed in his epistles are described as in
   Christ Jesus. He is careful to impress on believers the personal relation in
   which they stand to their Lord, even when he is addressing the whole Church
   to which they belong. If he writes to the Church of God which is in Corinth,
   [10] he is careful to add “to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
   called to be saints”; and in his other epistles he addresses the brethren
   individually as “saints,” “saints and faithful brethren,” “all that are in
   Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” [11] The individual believer is
   never lost in the society, and he is never alone and separate. The bond of
   union is not an external framework impressed from without, but a sense of
   fellowship springing from within. The believer’s union to Christ, which is
   the deepest of all personal things, always involves something social, The
   call comes to him singly, but seldom solitarily.

   Perhaps, however, St. Paul’s conception of the fellowship with Christ which
   is the basis of the Church, comes out most clearly in the way he speaks of
   the “gifts” of grace, the charismata, which manifest the abiding presence of
   our Lord in His Church and His continuing fellowship with His people. [12]
   He enumerates them over and over again. He points to “apostles,” the
   missionary heralds of the Gospel; to “prophets,” to whom the Spirit had
   given special powers for the edification of the brethren; to “teachers,” who
   are wise with the wisdom of God, and have those divine intuitions which the
   apostle calls “knowledge”; to “pastors,” who feed the flock in one
   community. He speaks of “helps” (antilēpseis) or powers to assist the sick,
   the tempted and the tried; of “insight” to give wise counsels; of gifts of
   rule (kubernēseis); of gifts of healing, and in general of all kinds of
   service. They are all gifts of the Spirit, and are all so many different
   manifestations of the presence of Jesus and of the living fellowship which
   His people have with Him. [13]

   These various gifts are bestowed on different members of the Christian
   society for the edification of all, and they serve to show that it is one
   organism, where the whole exists for the parts, and each part for the whole
   and for all the other parts. They also show that the Christian society is
   not a merely natural organism; there is divine life and power within it,
   because it has the abiding presence of Christ; and the proof of His presence
   is the possession and use of these various “gifts,” all of which come from
   the one Spirit of Christ in fulfilment of the promise that He will never
   leave nor forsake His Church. Their presence is a testimony to the presence
   of the Master which each Christian community can supply. It is a Church of
   Christ if His presence is manifested by these fruits of the Spirit which
   come from the exercise of the “gifts” which the Spirit has bestowed upon it;
   for the Church as well as the individual Christian is to be known by its
   fruits. [14]

   This sense of hidden fellowship with its Lord was the secret of the Church.
   It was a bond uniting its members and separating them from outsiders more
   completely than were the initiated into the pagan mysteries sundered from
   those who had not passed through the same introductory rites. While Jesus
   lived their fellowship with Him was the external thing which distinguished
   them from others. They were His disciples (mathētai) gathered round a
   centre, a Person whom they called Rabbi, Master, Teacher—names they were
   taught not to give to another. They shared a common teaching and drank in
   the same words of wisdom from the same lips; but even then they could not be
   called a “school,” for they were united by the bond of a common hope and a
   common future. They were to share in the coming kingdom of God in and
   through their relation to their Master. After His departure the other side
   of the fellowship became the prominent external thing—their relation to each
   other because of their relation to their common Lord. New names arose to
   express the change, names suggesting the relation in which they stood to
   each other. They were the “brethren,” the “saints,” and they had a
   fellowship (koinōnia) with each other. [15] This thought of fellowship, as
   we shall see, was the ruling idea in all Christian organization. All
   Christians within one community were to live in fellowship with each other;
   different Christian communities were to have a common fellowship. Visible
   fellowship with each other, the outcome of the hidden fellowship with Jesus,
   was to be at once the leading characteristic of all Christians and the bond
   which united them to each other and separated them from the world lying
   outside.

   2. The second characteristic of the Church of Christ is that it is a Unity.
   There was one assembly of the congregation of Israel; one sovereign assembly
   of the Greek city-state. There is one Church of Christ.

   It must be admitted that the word Church is seldom used in the New Testament
   to designate one universal and comprehensive society. On the contrary, out
   of the 110 times in which the word occurs, no less than 100 do not contain
   this note of a wide-spreading unity. In the overwhelming majority of cases
   the word “church” denotes a local Christian society, varying in extent from
   all the Christian congregations within a province of the Empire to a small
   assembly of Christians meeting together in the house of one of the brethren.
   St. Paul alone, [16] if we except the one instance in Matt. xvi., uses the
   word in its universal application; and he does it in two epistles only—those
   to the Ephesians and to the Colossians—both of them dating from his Roman
   captivity. [17] But there are numberless indications that the thought of the
   unity of the Church of Christ was never absent from the mind of the Apostle.
   The Christians he addresses are all brethren, all saints, whether they be in
   Jerusalem, Damascus, Ephesus or Rome. The believers in Thessalonica are
   praised because they had been “imitators of the churches of God which are in
   Judea,” who “are in Jesus Christ “ as the Thessalonians “are in Jesus
   Christ.” [18] The Epistles to the Corinthians are full of exhortations to
   unity within the local church, and the warnings are always based on
   principles which suggest the unity of the whole wide fellowship of
   believers. The divisions in the church at Corinth had arisen from a
   misguided apostolic partizanship which implied a lack of belief in Christian
   unity at the centre; the apostle repudiates this by holding forth the unity
   of Christ, and by pointing to the one Kingdom of God to be inherited. [19]
   He has the same message for all the local churches. However varied in
   environment they may be, these local churches have common usages, and ought
   to unite in showing a common sympathy with each other. [20]

   Besides these minor indications of the thought, we have, in various of his
   epistles what may be called its poetic expression. The Church of Christ is
   such a unity that it has thrown down all the walls of race, sex, and social
   usages which have kept men separate. [21] It has reconciled Jew and Gentile.
   It has bridged the gulf between the past of Israel and the present of
   apostolic Christianity. [22]

   These thoughts and phrases, which run through all the epistles of St. Paul,
   lead directly to the description of the glorious unity of the one Church of
   Christ which fills the great Epistle to the Ephesians. Thus, though it is
   true that we cannot point to a single use of the word “church” in the
   earlier epistles which can undoubtedly be said to mean a universal Christian
   society, the thought of this unity of all believers runs through them all.
   The conception of the unity of the Church of Christ is one of the abiding
   possessions of St. Paul in the earliest as in the latest of his writings;
   but it is only in the writings of his Roman captivity that it attains to its
   fullest expression. [23]

   This unity of the Church of Christ which filled the mind of St. Paul was
   something essentially spiritual. It is a reality, but a reality which is
   more ideal than material. It can never be adequately represented in a merely
   historical way. It is true that we can trace the beginnings of the formation
   of Christian communities, and the gradual federation of these Christian
   societies into a wide-spreading union of confederate churches; but that only
   faintly expresses the thought of the unity of the Church of Christ. It is
   true that we can see in the fellowship of Christians the illustration of the
   pregnant philosophical thought that it is not good for man to be alone, and
   that personality itself can only be rightly conceived when taken along with
   the thought of fellowship. [24] Apart, however, from all surface facts and
   philosophical ideas, there is something deeper in the unity of the Christian
   Church, something which lies implicitly in the unformed faith of every
   believer, that in personal union with Christ there is union with the whole
   body of the redeemed, and that man is never alone either in sin or in
   salvation. The unity of the Church of Christ is a primary verity of the
   Christian faith: “There is One Body, and One Spirit, even as ye are called
   in one hope of your calling; One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and
   Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all.” [25] And because
   the Unity of the Church of Christ is a primary verity of the Christian
   faith, it can never be adequately represented in any outward polity, but
   must always be, in the first instance at least, a religious experience. Its
   source and centre can never be an earthly throne, but must always be that
   heavenly place where Jesus sits at the Right Hand of God. [26]

   This enables us to see how the word “church” can be used, as it is in the
   New Testament, to denote communities of varying size, from the sum total of
   all the Christian communities on earth down to the tiny congregation which
   met in the house of Philemon. For the unity of the Christian Church is, in
   the first instance, the oneness of an ideal reality, and is not confined
   within the bounds of space and time as merely material entities are. It can
   be present in many places at the same time, and in such a way that, as
   Ignatius says, “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the whole Church.” [27] The
   congregation at Corinth was, in the eyes of St. Paul, the Body of Christ or
   the whole Church in its all-embracing unity—not a Body of Christ, for there
   is but one Body of Christ; not part of the Body of Christ, for Christ is not
   divided; but the Body of Christ in its unity and filled with the fulness of
   His powers. [28] It is in this One Body, present in every Christian society,
   that our Lord has placed His “gifts” or charismata, which enable the Church
   to perform its divine functions; and all the spiritual actions of the
   tiniest community, such as the Church in the house of Nymphas—Prayer,
   Praise, Preaching, Baptism, the Holy Supper—are actions of the whole Church
   of Christ.

   The Christians of the early centuries clung to this thought, and we have a
   long series of writers, from Victor of Rome, [29] in the second century,
   down to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, [30] who tell us that the whole
   Church of the redeemed, with Christ and the angels, is present in the public
   worship of the individual congregation. The promise of the Master, that
   where two or three were gathered together in His Name there would He be in
   the midst of them, was placed side by side with the thought in the Epistle
   to the Hebrews that believers are surrounded with a great cloud of
   witnesses; and the combination suggested that in the simplest action of the
   smallest Christian fellowship there was the presence and the power of the
   whole Church of Christ. Tertullian pushes the thought to its furthest limits
   when he says in a well-known passage: “Accordingly, where there is no joint
   session of the ecclesiastical order, you Offer, Baptize, and are Priest
   alone for yourself; for where three are there the Church is, although they
   be laity.” [31]

   3. The Church of our Lord’s promise was to be a visible community. This note
   of visibility is suggested by the word ecclesia itself, and by the whole
   environment of its earliest Christian use.

   The “congregation of Israel” and the “sovereign assembly” of the Greek
   city-state had been visible things. The time of the promise suggested a
   visible community. It came when the visible people of Israel had manifestly
   refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. His Church was set over against the
   Israel which had denied Him—one visible community against another. The
   earliest uses of the word ecclesia refer unmistakably to visible
   communities. When St. Paul persecuted the “Church of God,” he made havoc of
   something more than an abstraction. He haled men and women to prison and
   confined real bodies within real stone walls. The churches spoken of in the
   Acts and in the Epistles were societies of men and women, living in
   families, coming together for public worship, and striving in spite of many
   infirmities to live the life of new obedience to which they had been called.
   They were little societies in the world, connected with it on all sides and
   yet not of it—lamps set on lamp-stands to enlighten the darkness of
   surrounding paganism. The “gifts” of the Spirit, which manifested the
   presence of Christ, were seen at work in the public assembly of the
   congregation, and were given to edify a visible society.

   The two universal rites of the new society—Baptism and the Lord’s
   Supper—show that it was a visible thing. St. Paul makes it clear that
   entrance into the Church was by the visible rite of Baptism, and that he
   himself had come into the Church by this door. [32] The Lord’s Supper was a
   visible social institution, and could only occupy the place it did in a
   visible society. [33]

   Even the Church Universal, which is described in the Epistle to the
   Ephesians, is a visible Church. It is an ideal reality; but an ideal Church
   is not invisible because it is ideal. It can be seen in any Christian
   community, great or small; seen in a measure by the eye of sense, but more
   truly by the eye of faith. For it is one of the privileges of faith, when
   strengthened by hope and by love, to see the glorious ideal in the somewhat
   poor material reality. It was thus that St. Paul saw the universal Church of
   Christ made visible in the Christian community of Corinth.

   St. Paul has described the Church in that great trading and manufacturing
   city of Corinth, where the rich were very rich and the poor were very poor;
   where the thoroughness of character, inherited from the early Roman
   colonists, had pushed the sensuous side of Greek civilization into all
   manner of excesses, until the city had become a by-word for foul living, and
   religion itself had become an incentive to lust. [34] This environment had
   tainted the Christian society. St. Paul saw it all and has described it. He
   has made us see the very Love-feasts, which introduced the Holy Supper,
   changed into banquets of display on the part of the rich, while the poor
   were swept into corners or compelled to wait till their wealthier brethren
   were served. He has shown us petty rivalries disguising themselves under the
   mask of faithfulness to eminent apostolic teachers. He has depicted the
   tainted morals of the city appearing unchecked within the Christian society.
   What a picture the heathen satirist Lucian, with his keen eye and his
   outspoken tongue, would have drawn of such a community! St. Paul saw all the
   frailty, the feebleness to resist the evil communications and the
   fickleness; and yet he saw in that community the Body of Christ. He needed
   the love that “beareth all things, that believeth all things, and that
   hopeth all things,” to make his vision clear—and that is perhaps the reason
   why the wonderful chapter on Christian love comes in the middle of this
   epistle; but his vision was clear, and he saw the life there with its
   potency and promise. He could say to that Church Ye are the Body of Christ.
   He could see it, as he saw the Ephesian Church, becoming gradually rooted
   and grounded in love, gradually strengthened to apprehend with all saints
   the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of that love of Christ
   which passeth knowledge, and at last filled with all the fulness of God.

   All things earthly have a double element, whether they be of good or evil
   report. They are in the present and they are making for the future. They are
   what they are to be. It is the same with all things belonging to
   Christianity on the human side. We are “sons of God,” and yet we “wait for
   the adoption”; we are redeemed, and yet our redemption “draweth nigh.” Those
   who “have been saved” are enjoined to “work out their own salvation.” So it
   is with the Church of God. It is what it is to be. [35] And we are
   definitely taught by the very ways in which St. Paul uses the word “ Church
   “ to see the Church Universal in the individual Christian community. [36]

   It will be admitted, however, that ideals are given us to be made manifest
   to the eye of sense as well as to the vision of faith. and that a duty is
   laid upon every Christian and upon every Christian society to make the
   universality of the Church of Christ which is manifest to faith plainly
   apparent to the eyes of sense. If the duty has been but scantily performed
   since the beginning of the third century, we may find that the neglect has
   come from abandoning apostolic methods in favour of others suggested by the
   great pagan empire of Rome. The duty of trying to make visible to the senses
   the inherent unity of the Church of Christ was always distinctly present to
   the mind of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and it may be useful to see
   how he set himself to the task.

   One thing meets us at the outset. He would not for the sake of an external
   universality agree to anything which would set limits on the real
   universality of the Church of Christ. The preservation of the liberty with
   which Jesus had made His people free was of more importance in His eyes than
   the manifestation of the visibility of the universal fellowship of
   Christians with each other. Jewish believers were inclined to think that the
   practice of circumcision “embodied the principle of the historical
   continuity of the Church,” [37] and that no one who was outside the circle
   of the “circumcised,” no matter how strong his faith nor how the fruits of
   the Spirit were manifest in his life and deeds, could plead the “security of
   the Divine Covenant,” For this they could give reasons stronger than are
   brought forward by many who, in our own day, insist on different external
   “successions” as marks of catholicity. The Scripture had said: “My covenant
   shall be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant.” [38] The Saviour himself
   had been circumcised on the eighth day. He had never, in so many words,
   either publicly to the people or privately to His disciples, declared that
   circumcision was no longer to be the sign of the covenant of God.

   St. Paul recognized that to limit “the security of the covenant” to
   something defined by what the Jews believed to be the “principle of the
   historical continuity of the Church,” would be to destroy the real for a
   limited, though more sensibly visible, universality. He bent his whole
   energies to break down this false principle of continuity which placed the
   “succession” in something external, and not in the possession and
   transmission from generation to generation of the “gifts” of the Spirit
   within the community. This done, he used his administrative powers, and they
   were those of a statesman, to create channels for the flow of the
   manifestation of the visible unity of the Church of Christ.

   His ruling thought was to provide that all the various Christian communities
   should manifest their real brotherhood in the cultivation of the “fruits of
   the Spirit.” The method of carving out a visibly universal Church by means
   of regulations affecting organization and external form is not without its
   attractions, which are irresistible to minds of the lawyer type and
   training, such as we see afterwards in Cyprian of Carthage. It seems a short
   and easy method of showing that the whole Church is visibly one. But it was
   not Paul’s method. He seems to have thought as little about the special
   “construction of sheep-folds” as his Master. What concerned him was that the
   sheep should be gathered into one flock around the One Shepherd. He nowhere
   prescribed a universal ecclesiastical polity, still less did he teach that
   the universality of the Christian brotherhood must be made visible in this
   way. He regarded all the separate churches of Christ as independent
   self-governing societies. He strove to implant in all of them the principle
   of brotherly dealing with one another, and he dug channels in which the
   streams of the Spirit might flow in the practical manifestation of Christian
   fellowship.

   Fellowship (koinōnia), word and thought, is what filled his mind. All the
   brethren within one Church were to have fellowship with each other. The
   local churches within a definite region were to be in close fellowship. The
   churches among the Gentiles were to maintain brotherly relations with the
   Mother-Church in Jerusalem. What this fellowship primarily meant can be
   learnt from what the apostle says in Gal. ii. 9. [39] He tells us that the
   apostles to the Jews, and he the apostle to the Gentiles, gave each other
   the right hand of fellowship, because they recognized that they had a common
   faith in the same Christ. It was the recognition of a common belief in the
   One Christ, the knowledge that they all had within them a new faith which
   had revolutionised their lives, and was to express itself in their whole
   character and conduct, that made them feel the kinship with each other which
   was expressed in the common name “brethren.” All down through the early
   centuries this idea that Christians form one brotherhood finds abundant
   expression. Brotherhood alternates with Ecclesia in the oldest sets of
   ecclesiastical canons, [40] while omnis fraternitas and pasa hē adelphotēs
   are used to denote the whole of Christendom. [41]

   The graceful deference which St. Paul always showed to the leaders in
   Jerusalem, who had been in Christ before himself; his anxieties about the
   welfare of the poor “saints” at Jerusalem, and his care to provide for their
   needs; [42] the letters he asks to be read to all the members of the
   churches to which they are addressed, and sometimes to other churches also;
   [43] the eagerness with which he communicates the fact that the church he is
   writing to enjoys a reputation for hospitality towards wayfaring brethren;
   [44] the salutations his letters contain from one church to another, [45]
   and from individual Christians to the churches; [46] the messages sent by
   his assistants; his and their frequent journeyings from church to church—are
   all evidences of his unwearied efforts to make the universality of the
   Christian brotherhood widely manifest.

   He did more. He grouped his churches in a statesmanlike way so that each
   could support the others. His statesmanship discerned the advantages which
   the imperial system, with its trade routes, its postal arrangements and its
   provincial capitals, gave not merely for the propagation of the Gospel, but
   for the fellowship of the churches. Corinth was the centre for the churches
   of Achaia, and the second Epistle to the Corinthians is addressed to all the
   Christians within that important Roman province. [47] Round Ephesus [48]
   were grouped the churches of Asia—Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis,
   Philadelphia, Laodicea, with Troas and others on the coast, and Colossae and
   Hierapolis in the Lycus valley. [49] The churches of Macedonia were, in al:
   probability, grouped round Thessalonica, [50] and those of Galatia formed
   another group, although we are not told what the centre was. [51]

   While engaged in giving visibility to the unity of the churches he had
   planted St. Paul was never unmindful that he wished also to see them united
   visibly with the churches of Jerusalem and Judea. He had started with the
   thought of a visible fellowship between Jew and Gentile, and the union which
   was symbolised when Barnabas and he gave and received the right hand of
   fellowship with Peter, James and John, was never far from his thoughts. He
   thought of One Church of Christ which embraced Jew and Gentile all the world
   over. [52]

   But perhaps the evidence of the apostle’s method of implanting a sense of a
   visible unity within the Church of Christ is best seen in the methods, plan
   and motive of the great collection for the saints at Jerusalem, which fills
   so large a place in his epistles.

   This great collection was no mere spontaneous outburst of Christian charity
   like the previous succours sent to the poor of Jerusalem. It was a
   carefully-planned attempt to unite a host of independent churches, which
   represented wide areas, in co-operative brotherly action. The preparations
   occupied more than a year’s time. The principle of representation was
   introduced. Each group of contributing churches sent deputies, all of whom
   joined the apostle at different places and at different dates, and
   accompanied him to Jerusalem, bearing with them the money collected. The
   anxiety which the apostle displayed in the careful arrangement of all the
   details; the patience with which he awaited the complete mustering of the
   delegates on the road; the determination that nothing should prevent him
   from accompanying the delegates to Jerusalem—not even prophetic warnings of
   danger nor the hindrance of cherished plans to visit Rome—all combine to
   show that he regarded it as the fulfilment of long cherished plans for
   making visible the fellowship of all believers in the way that best
   commended itself to his mind. [53]

   It may be that the success of this mustering of his mission churches, this
   triumphant experiment of co-operation and re-presentation, combined with the
   assurance that Jew and Gentile were at last dwelling harmoniously within the
   One Household of God, kindled the thoughts which find expression in the
   epistles of his Roman captivity. The unity of the wide-spreading Church of
   Christ was at last made visible to the eyes of sense, not by uniformity of
   external polity, but by the manifestation of brotherly love. The actual
   unity of all believers was conspicuous in this great fruit of the Spirit of
   Christ.

   If we follow the accounts given us in the Acts, the tests of what was
   required for visible fellowship by the leaders of the church in Jerusalem
   did not differ greatly from those demanded by St. Paul. It seemed to be
   their custom when they heard of some new and unexpected appearance of faith
   in Jesus to send down some one to inquire about it. Peter and John were sent
   to Samaria to inquire into the conversions among the Samaritans made by the
   preaching of Philip. [54] Barnabas was sent down to Antioch on a similar
   errand. [55] The tests applied in both cases seem to have been: Are there
   any manifestations of the fruits of the Spirit in the lives of the new
   converts? The case of Antioch is most instructive. The Gospel had been
   proclaimed there, we know not how or by whom. The apostles at Jerusalem seem
   to have had nothing to do with the proclamation. An infant church had come
   into being without their guidance or assistance. Its birth is unrecorded;
   its earliest history unknown; the congregation is in being before the
   apostles seem to have heard of it. When the delegate from Jerusalem appeared
   and made his inquiries, what satisfied him was that the grace of God was
   manifestly with the brethren there. The believers in Antioch and the
   delegate from Jerusalem had the same faith in the same Saviour, and their
   faith found its proper outcome in a renewed life. That was enough for
   fellowship or visible and fraternal union. We see no attempt to impose any
   external ecclesiastical ordinances, no suggestions about the need for
   showing themselves to be in the line of the “historic continuity of the
   church” by accepting circumcision or otherwise. Whether we take the
   reception of Cornelius, the welcome accorded to the Samaritan converts, or
   the joy of Barnabas when he perceived that the grace of God was manifest in
   Antioch, the unity of the Christian Church was made visible to the eyes of
   sense, not by uniformity of organization, but by the manifestation of the
   fruits of the Spirit; that was the one feature that was regarded as proof
   that it was worthy of being received into the common fellowship.

   IV. To this visible society belongs Authority. The very thought of a
   Christian Church visible suggests the idea of a separate community with a
   distinct sphere of religious life; and this in turn implies that the society
   must have, like every form of corporate social existence, powers of
   oversight and discipline to be exercised upon its members. But the authority
   which the Church possesses is altogether different from what a voluntary
   association of men may exercise upon its members, and of another kind from
   what is possessed by lawful civil government. The authority comes from
   Christ Himself. The Christian Democracy is also a Theocracy; it combines the
   two ideas of rule associated with the Greek and the Hebrew uses of the word
   “ecclesia.” While the authority belongs to the whole member-ship, and is
   therefore democratic; it nevertheless comes from above, and is therefore
   theocratic. [56] It comes from Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the Church.
   [57]

   Our Lord has intimated that He has imparted this authority to His Church in
   many recorded sayings, and in particular in three well-known passages: in
   Matt. xvi. 13-19; Matt. xviii. 15-20, and in John xx. 21-23.

   The first promise was made to St. Peter in very special circumstances. Our
   Lord had asked a question of all His disciples. St. Peter, answering
   impetuously in their name, made himself their representative. His answer was
   an adoring confession of his faith in the Person of Christ [58] —a
   confession which contained in germ all the future confessions of the Church
   of Christ, and which made him the spokesman for the mighty multitude which
   no man can number, who were to make the same confession of adoring trust in
   their Saviour. The confession was an inspired one; it had been revealed to
   St. Peter by the Father; there was divinity in it, for God gave the
   revelation which prompted the confession ; and there was humanity in it, for
   the man appropriated and made his own what the Father had revealed to him.
   It was the first of what was to become a multitudinous sea of voices of men
   inspired by the Father to know and to confess that Jesus was the Christ, the
   Son of the Living God. It was to the Peter who answered as representing the
   Twelve, to Peter who was the spokesman for countless thousands of the
   faithful who down through the march of Time would make the same glad
   confession, that the promise was given.

   The promise was of authority to bear the key of the household of the
   faithful, to have the power to let in and keep out from the household. The
   words and metaphor used were the familiar Jewish terms to denote a delegated
   authority. The thought conveyed is commonly and correctly explained by a
   reference to the substitution of Shebna for Eliakim in the stewardship of
   the House of David; [59] and it is implied that our Lord, in the word He
   used, made St. Peter, and those he represented, stewards of the Household of
   the faithful with the authority to “bind” and to “loose,” to “prohibit” and
   to “permit,” to “admit” and “exclude.” Other passages in the New Testament,
   making use of the same simile of the major-domo with his key and his power
   of letting in or locking out, assist us to see the fuller meaning of the
   promise recorded. The one is a warning and the other an encouragement. Our
   Lord called the attention of his followers to the scribes and Pharisees, who
   “sat in Moses’ seat,” and had to be obeyed. They had the keys and they used
   them to shut the door of the kingdom of heaven against men. [60] Jesus
   pronounces woe on them for using the keys in this way. Their shutting out,
   although they have the keys officially, was evidently not ratified in
   heaven. Hence we must infer that the mere official position of being the
   bearer of the “keys” does not always ensure that what is done on earth by
   the bearer will be ratified in heaven. Then in the message to the Church in
   Philadelphia, the brethren there were told that the real bearer of the
   “keys” is the Lord Himself. [61] It is only when He lets in that there can
   be no exclusion; it is only when He shuts out that there is any real
   exclusion. A real authority is bestowed, and real powers are given; but just
   as Peter’s confession depended on the inspiration of the Father, so the
   ratification of the exercise of power depends on its Christ-like use.

   It is doubtful whether the second saying was addressed to the Twelve, or to
   a larger group of disciples, but the advice which precedes the promise is to
   be applied and can only be applied to all the followers of Jesus within a
   community. It gives directions for dealing with offences and offenders
   within the Christian society, and has been commonly regarded as the
   Scriptural warrant for the exercise of discipline within the Church. It
   proceeds on the idea that offences may arise from thoughtlessness as well as
   from wilful sin, and that the offender, in spite of his offence, is a
   brother to be won back to brotherliness. It prescribes a threefold attempt
   to win back the erring brother to a state of brotherly feeling. If
   everything fails, if the offender has refused to hear the offended person
   pleading with him in his own person, if he has rejected the remonstrances of
   two or three fellow-Christians pleading with him, if he finally spurns the
   warnings of the Church or whole Christian society, then, and not till then,
   does the thought of punishment enter. The punishment, if punishment it can
   be called, is expulsion of a certain kind from the Christian communion. The
   offender is to be treated as the Jewish Synagogue acted towards a Gentile or
   a publican. He was to be looked on as if he had never belonged to the
   society, or as if he had voluntarily excluded himself by the course of life
   he had chosen to persist in.

   We are told that the decisions of the Church on earth in such cases as those
   described will be ratified in Heaven. This is a confirmation of the promise
   given to St. Peter, and like it is strictly conditional. The condition
   attached is that there must be a real and living communion between the
   Church and its Head the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the Church decides in a
   Christ-like spirit. It is impossible to separate the promise from the verses
   which immediately follow. Our Lord Himself joins them together by very
   solemn words. This condition does not render the promise of ratification
   deceptive. The fellowship with Christ, which is the condition, is to be had
   provided it is sought for earnestly, honestly and trustingly in prayer (v.
   19).

   The authority is given to the society of believers, whether two or three
   meeting together in a place far from any others, or a great and organised
   community. It is not entrusted by our Lord directly to any official class;
   it is not given to any human power not rising out of the company of the
   faithful. It is given to the visible fellowship, and it belongs to them in
   reality, as well as in name, in the measure in which they have living
   communion with Him Who is their Head.

   The third promise seems to have been made to the nucleus of the infant
   Church in Jerusalem, if we are to accept Luke xxiv. 33 ff. as the parallel
   passage—to “the disciples and those who were with them.” It is commonly held
   to include all that is bestowed in the other two, and perhaps something even
   more solemn—the power to pronounce the divine sentence of pardon involved in
   the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ. Whatever be the powers granted,
   they are given to the whole company of believers and not to any class among
   them. They are also, as in the earlier passages, given under conditions. The
   power can only manifest itself in those who are filled with the Spirit of
   Christ. [62] In virtue of this promise with its gift of power the visible
   Church of Christ can with absolute confidence declare the gospel of pardon
   through the work of Christ, and can assert that the divine conditions are
   those which it proclaims. In virtue of the same promise every individual
   Christian is entitled to affirm with absolute certainty to every penitent
   sinner that God pardons his sins if he accepts Jesus as his All-sufficient
   Saviour. [63]

   The authority was given in the first passage to one man; in the second
   probably to the Twelve; in the third to the whole Christian community. In
   each case the more particular is absorbed in the more general. The power
   given to St. Peter in the first passage is merged in the authority given to
   the Twelve in the second; and the authority given to the Twelve is in turn
   merged in the authority given to the whole congregation. St. Peter received
   the power because he represented the Twelve directly, and the whole Church
   founded on him and on his confession indirectly. The Twelve received it
   because they represented the Church which was to come into existence through
   their ministry. After the Resurrection the whole infant Church received the
   same, if not greater, authority. St. Peter was to die; the Twelve also were
   to go the way of all flesh; but the society was to remain, and with it the
   authority bestowed upon it by its Lord.

   It is needless to say that very varying interpretations of these three
   passages have been given by different schools of theologians; that Romanists
   found on the promise given to St. Peter, and that some Anglicans insist that
   the third promise was made to the Eleven only, even if the company included
   other disciples, and build up the edifice of Apostolic Succession on this
   narrow foundation; and that both affirm that the authority which our Lord
   gave to His Church was placed directly in the hands of office-bearers, and
   not in those of the whole membership.

   To examine at length the various exegetical arguments brought forward in
   support of these positions would lead far beyond the space at our disposal;
   but two general considerations may be adduced. Such an interpretation seems
   to be against the analogy of our Lord’s teaching; and He was not so
   understood by His New Testament Church.

   While our Lord chose Twelve to form an inner circle of disciples, while He
   trained them by close companionship with Himself for special service, while
   He weaned them in half-conscious ways from their old life, it nowhere
   appears that He bestowed upon them a special rank or instituted a peculiar
   or exceptional office of stewardship of divine mysteries in their persons.
   [64] It is improbable that He bestowed on them the name apostles to be a
   general and distinguishing title, and one unshared in by other disciples
   besides the Twelve. Our Lord called them apostles when He sent them on a
   special mission among the villages; they were apostles while this mission
   lasted; when it came to an end they were the Twelve or inner circle of
   intimates of the Master. [65] After the Death and Resurrection of the Lord
   the task to which they had been trained by companion-ship with the Saviour
   and in the apprentice mission among the villages, became their life work,
   but it was shared in from the very beginning by others who bore with them
   the common name apostle. [66] Nor does our Lord make any promises to the
   Twelve which imply that He had bestowed upon them a special rank in the
   Church which was to come. He told them that whoever received them received
   Him; but this was a privilege shared in by the least of His followers, for
   whoever received a little child in His name received Him. [67] It is
   impossible to avoid noticing how the ancient manuals of church organization
   have caught the spirit of Christ’s teaching, that there are to be no
   lordships in His Church. The qualifications set forth for office are those
   which every Christian ought to possess; and the duties said to belong to
   office are those which for the most part all Christians ought to perform. We
   do not see orders in the sense of ecclesiastical rank whose authority does
   not come from the people; we see ecclesiastical order and arrangement of
   service. Whatever power and authority the Church of Christ possesses in gift
   from the Lord resides in the membership of the Church and not in any
   superior rank of officials who have received an authority over the Church
   directly from Christ Himself.

   The Church of the New Testament evidently interpreted the words of our Lord
   to mean that He placed the authority which He had bestowed upon His Church
   in the hands of the membership, of the community which formed the local
   church.

   Even in the Primitive Church in Jerusalem, where the presence of an apostle
   was seldom lacking, the community was self-governing, and acted on the
   conviction that the authority bestowed by Christ on His Church belonged to
   the whole congregation of the faithful and not to an apostolic hierarchy.
   The assembly of the local church appointed delegates and elected
   office-bearers. The vice-apostle Matthias and the Seven were, elected by the
   assembly, [68] and a similar assembly appointed Barnabas to be its delegate
   to Antioch. [69] The assembly of the local church summoned even apostles
   before it, and passed judgment upon their conduct. [70] The apostles might
   suggest, but the congregation ruled.

   When we pass from the Church at Jerusalem to the churches planted by the
   ministry of St. Paul, the proofs of democratic self-government are still
   more abundant. When the apostle urges the duty of stricter discipline, or
   when he recommends a merciful treatment of one who had lapsed, he writes to
   the whole community in whose hands the authority resides. He pictures
   himself in their midst while they are engaged in this painful duty. He
   assures them that they have the authority of the Lord for the exercise of
   discipline. For however thoroughly democratic the government of the New
   Testament Church was, it was still as thoroughly theocratic. The presence of
   the Lord Himself was with them in the exercise of the authority He had
   entrusted to their charge. [71] The evidence of the presence of Christ was
   of the same kind as witnessed His presence in the actions of public worship.
   The local churches recognised His presence in the manifestation of the
   “gifts” of His Spirit bestowed upon them. These “gifts” included not only
   the bestowal of grace needed for exhortation to edification, but also the
   wisdom to “govern” and to “guide.” The theocratic element was not given in a
   hierarchy imposed upon the Church from without; it manifested itself within
   the community. It appeared in the presence, recognition and use made of
   gifts of government bestowed upon its membership which were none the less
   spiritual, divine and “from above,” because they concerned the ordinary
   duties of oversight and manifested themselves in the natural endowments of
   members of the community. The presence of Christ among His people may be as
   easily manifested in the decision which the assembly of the local church
   arrives at by a majority [72] of votes as in the fiat launched from an
   episcopal chair. The latter is not necessarily from above, and the former is
   not of necessity from beneath.

   V. Lastly, the Church of Christ is a sacerdotal society.

   The Church of Christ is continually represented as the “ideal Israel.” This
   is a favourite thought of St. Paul’s, and it implies that the special
   function of the Church of Christ is to do in a better manner what the
   ancient Israel did imperfectly. When we ask what the special function of the
   ancient Israel was, we find it given in a great variety of ways, all of
   which include one central thought, best expressed perhaps by the phrase, “To
   approach God.” This central idea was connected with the thoughts of special
   times of approach, or Holy Seasons; with a special place of approach, which
   was the Temple of God’s Presence; and with a special set of men who made the
   approach on behalf of their fellows, and who were called Priests. When we
   turn to the Church of Christ we find the same central thought and the same
   dependent ideas. The main function of the New Testament Church is also to
   approach God. Just as in the Old Testament economy the priests when
   approaching God presented sacrifices to Him, so in the New Testament Church
   gifts are to be presented to God, and these gifts or offerings bear the Old
   Testament name of sacrifices. We are enjoined to present our bodies; [73]
   our praise, “that is the fruit of our lips which make confession to His
   name”; [74] our faith; [75] our alms-giving; [76] our “doing good and
   communicating.” [77] These are all called “sacrifices,” or “sacrifices
   well-pleasing to God,” and, to distinguish them from the offerings of the
   Old Testament economy, “spiritual or living sacrifices.” [78] The exertions
   made by St. Paul to bring the heathen to a knowledge of the Saviour is also
   called a sacrifice or offering. [79] The New Testament Church is the ideal
   Israel, and does the work which the ancient Israel was appointed to do. The
   limitations only have disappeared. There is no trace in the New Testament
   Church of any specially holy places or times or persons. The Christian ideal
   is, to quote the late Dr. Lightfoot, a Holy Season extending all the year
   round, a Temple confined only by the limits of the habitable globe, and a
   Priesthood including every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. [80]

   This does not mean that the New Testament Church may not select special days
   for the public worship of God; that it may not dedicate buildings where the
   faithful can meet together to unite in offering the sacrifices of prayer and
   praise; that it may not set apart men from among its membership and appoint
   them to lead its devotions. But it does mean that God can be approached at
   all times, and in every place, and by every one among His people. His fellow
   believers may select one from among themselves to be their minister. There
   may be a ministering priesthood, but there cannot be a mediating priesthood
   within the Christian society. There is one Mediator only, and all, men,
   women and children, have the promise of immediate entrance into the presence
   of God, and are priests.

   Luther has expressed the thought of the sacerdotal character of the Church
   of Christ when he says, in a description of the Eucharistic service: “There
   our priest or minister stands before the altar, having been publicly called
   to his priestly function; he repeats publicly and distinctly Christ’s words
   of the Institution; he takes the Bread and the Wine, and distributes it
   according to Christ’s words; and we all kneel beside him and around him, men
   and women, young and old, master and servant, mistress and maid, all holy
   priests together, sanctified by the blood of Christ. We are there in our
   priestly dignity. . . . We do not let the priest proclaim for himself the
   ordinance of Christ; but he is the mouthpiece of us all, and we all say it
   with him in our hearts with true faith in the Lamb of God Who feeds us with
   His Body and Blood.”

   This sacerdotal character of the whole Church of Christ was maintained in
   the primitive Christian Church down to at least the middle of the third
   century. Whatever evinced a whole-hearted dedication of one’s self to God
   was a sacrifice which required no mediating priesthood in the offering. For
   the Christian sacrifice always means a sacrifice of self. When Polycarp gave
   his body to be burnt for the faith of Jesus, he gave it in sacrifice, and
   every martyr’s death or suffering was a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. [81]
   When poor and humble believers fasted that they might have food to give to
   the hungry, they were sacrificing a spiritual sacrifice. [82] When
   Christians, either at home and in private or in the assembly for public
   worship, poured forth prayers and thanksgivings, they were offering
   sacrifice to God. [83] Justin Martyr does not hesitate to call such
   devotions “the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God.” [84]

   And the Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of all Christian public
   worship, where Christ gives Himself to His people, and where His people
   dedicate themselves to Him in body, soul and spirit, was always a sacrifice
   as prayers, praises and almagi ring were. The Church of Christ was a
   sacerdotal society, its members were all priests, and its services were all
   sacrifices. [85]

   Such is the New Testament thought of the Church of Christ—a Fellowship, a
   United Fellowship, a Visible Fellowship, a Fellowship with an Authority
   bestowed upon it by its Lord, and a sacerdotal Fellowship whose every member
   has the right of direct access to the throne of God, bringing with him the
   sacrifices of himself, of his praise and of his confession.
     _________________________________________________________________

   [1] Matt. xvi. 18. Some modern critics (cf. Schmiedel in the Encyc. Bibl.,
   p. 3105) declare that this passage could not have come from the lips of our
   Lord in the form in which it has been recorded, and in particular that He
   could not have used the word “ecclesia”; the main reason given being that
   our Lord sought to reform hearts and not external conditions. To argue from
   that statement, however true it may be, that Jesus had no intention of
   founding a religious community and could not have used the word “church,”
   seems to me to be purely subjective and therefore untrustworthy reasoning.
   Besides, the use of the word by St. Paul in Gal. i. 13, shows that St. Paul
   found the word existing within Christian circles when he embraced the new
   faith; and to find it in common use at so early a period entitles us, in my
   judgment, to trace it back to Jesus Himself. The trend of modern criticism
   has been to place St. Paul’s conversion much closer to the crucifixion than
   it was formerly held to be. St. Paul implies that the words of the
   eucharistic formula (Mk. xiv. 22-24, Matt. xxvi. 26-28) came from Jesus; he
   takes it for granted that every one who becomes a Christian (himself
   included) must be baptized. We have thus, quite independently of the Gospels
   or of the Acts, “church,” “baptism,” “the eucharist”—all implying a
   religious community, all in common use at a time scarcely two years after
   the death of our Lord, That entitles us to attribute them to Jesus Himself.

   [2] Compare Josephus, Antiq. XV. x. 3; Bell. Jud. I, xxi. 3. See also
   Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes (1898, 3rd ed.), ii. 158 f.; G. A.
   Smith, Historical Geography of Palestine, p. 473 ff.; Wissowa, Religion and
   Kultus der Römer (1902), p. 284, n. 3.

   [3] Numbers x. 2, 3. In the Old Testament two words are used to denote the
   assembling of Israel, qāhāl and ’edāh; the former is translated “assembly”
   and the latter “congregation” in the Revised Version. In the Septuagint
   ekklēsia is almost always always used to translate qāhāl, and sunagōgē to
   translate ’edāh. Both Greek words appear continually in the later
   Hellenistic Judaism, and it is difficult to distinguish their meanings; but
   Schürer is inclined to think that sunagōgē means the assembly of Israel as a
   matter of fact; while ekklēsia has always an ideal reference attached to it.
   Compare Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes (3rd ed. 1898), ii. 432, n.
   10; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, pp. 5-7.

   [4] This is the common use of the word in classical Greek; in the later
   Greek the word denotes any popular assembly, even a disorderly one; it is
   this use that is found in Acts xix. 41. Dio Cassius uses the word to denote
   the Roman comitia or ruling popular assembly of the sovereign Roman people.
   The ruling idea in the word, whether in classical or in Hellenistic Greek,
   is that it denotes an assembly of the people, not of a committee or council.
   Against this view compare Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian
   Churches (1881), p. 30, n. 11; and for a criticism of Hatch, see Sohm,
   Kirchenrecht (1892), i. 17, n. 4.

   [5] Acts xv. 16; cf. Amos ix. 11.

   [6] Gal. vi. 16; Acts xx. 28; cf. Ps. lxxiv. 2.

   [7] Weizsäcker, Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, xviii, 481.

   [8] The rock on which the Church is founded is “a human character
   acknowledging our Lord’s divine Sonship.” Gore, The Church and the Ministry,
   3rd ed. p. 38. “In virtue of this personal faith vivifying their
   discipleship, the Apostles became themselves the first little Ecclesia,
   constituting a living rock upon which a far larger and ever enlarging
   Ecclesia should very shortly be built slowly up, living stone by living
   stone, as each new faithful convert was added to the society.” Hort, The
   Christian Ecclesia, p. 17.

   [9] Matt xvi. 22, 23. The suggestion of the Evil One to Peter, and presented
   to our Lord by Peter—the possibility of Messiahship without suffering—met
   the Saviour at the great moments of His earthly ministry; at the beginning,
   in the Temptation scene; here, when he had the vision and gave the promise
   of the Church; at the end, in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are
   indications in the Gospels that it was the temptation never absent from his
   mind. In the form in which it presents itself to His followers—the
   possibility of saving fellowship with Jesus apart from trust on a suffering
   Saviour—it has perhaps also been the crowning temptation of His Church and
   followers. If our Lord alluded to this special temptation when He said to
   St. Peter, near the end, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that
   he might sift you as wheat,” as is most likely from His references to His
   own temptations and to St. Peter’s relation to his brethren, there is a
   delicate suggestion of fellowship softening rebuke and vivifying the
   promise; Luke xxii. 31.

   [10] 1 Cor. i. 2.

   [11] Phil. i. 1; Eph. i. 1; Col. i. 2; Rom. i. 7.

   [12] 1 Cor. xii.; Eph. iv. 4-13; Rom. xii. 3-16. It is important to notice
   that St. Paul, in Rom. xii. 7, makes diakonia a “gift” which manifests the
   presence of Christ, and that this word is used to mean any kind of
   “ministry” within the Church. See below p. 62.

   [13] See p. 63 n.

   [14] For St. Paul’s statement about the “gifts’: compare Hort, The Christian
   Ecclesia, pp. 153-70; Heinrici, Das Erste Sendschreiben des Apostel Paulus
   an die Korinther (1880), pp. 347-463; Kühl, Die Gemeindeordnung in den
   Pastoralbriefen (1885), pp. 42-49.

   [15] Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age (English translation), I. p. 44 ff.

   [16] It ought to be noted, however, that although we do not find the word
   “ecclesia” in 1 Peter, we do find the thought of the unity of all believers
   strongly expressed in a variety of ways: “Ye are an elect race, a royal
   priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter ii.
   9); and in v. 17 we have the word “brotherhood” used to bring out the same
   idea: This word in the early centuries was technically used as synonymous
   with ecclesia. See below p. 21. The double meaning of ecclesia is found in
   Matt. xvi. 18 compared with Matt. xviii. 17. In the Apocalypse the unity is
   expressed in the phrase “the Bride, the Lamb’s wife,” and the plurality in
   the “Seven Churches” (Rev. xxi. 9; ii. 1, etc).

   [17] The various passages in which the word “ecclesia” occurs in the sense
   of the Christian society have often been collected and grouped. The
   following classification is based on that of Dr. Hort. i. The word
   “ecclesia,” in the singular and with the article, is used to denote:— 1. The
   original Church of Jerusalem and Judea, when there was no other; Acts v. 11;
   viii. 1, 3; Gal. i. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 9; Phil. iii. 6. 2. The sum total of the
   churches in Judea, Samaria and Galilee; Acts ix. 31. 3. The local
   church:—Jerusalem, Acts xi. 22; xii. 1, 5; xv. 4. Thessalonica, 1 Thess. i.
   1; 2 Thess. i. 1. Corinth, 1 Cor. i. 2; vi. 4; xiv. 12, 23; 2 Cor. i. 1;
   Rom. xvi. 23. Cenchrea, Rom. xvi. 1. Laodicea, Col. iv. 16. Antioch, Acts
   xiii. 1; xv. 2. Each of the Seven Churches of Asia, Rev. ii. iii. Ephesus,
   Acts xi. 26; xiv. 27; xx. 17; 1 Tim. v. 16. Caesarea, Acts xviii. 22. Also
   in Jas. v. 14; 3 John 9, 10. 4. The assembly of a local church:—Acts xv. 22;
   1 Cor. xiv. 23. 5. The House Church:—at Ephesus, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; at Rome,
   xvi. 5; at Colossae, Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2. ii. The word “ecclesia,” in the
   singular and without the article, is used to denote:— 1. Every local church
   within a definite district:—Acts xiv. 23. 2. Any or every local Church:—1
   Cor. xiv. 4; iv. 17; Phil. iv. 15; and probably 1 Tim. iii. 5, 15. 3. The
   assembly of the local church:—1 Cor. xiv. 19, 35; xi. 18; 3 John 6. iii. The
   word “ecclesia” in the plural is used to denote:— 1. The sum of the local
   churches within a definite district. the name being given or implied:—Judea,
   1 Thess. ii. 14; Gal. i. 22. Galatia, 1 Cor. xvi. 1; Gal. i. 2. Syria and
   Cilicia, Acts xv. 41. Derbe and Lystra, Acts xvi. 5. Macedonia, 2 Cor. viii.
   1, 19. Asia, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Rev. i. 4, 11, 20; ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6,
   13, 22; xxii. 16. 2. An indefinite number of local churches:—2 Cor. xi. 8,
   28; viii. 23, 24; Rom. xvi. 4, 16. 3. The sum total of all the local
   churches:—2 Thess. i. 4; 1 Cor. vii. 17; xi. 16; xiv. 33; 2 Cor. xii. 13. 4.
   The assemblies of all the local churches:—1 Cor. xiv. 34. iv. The word
   “ecclesia” is used in the singular to denote:— 1. The one universal Church
   as represented in the individual local Church:—l Cor. x. 32; xi. 22; (and
   probably) xii. 28; Acts xx. 28; (and perhaps) 1 Tim. iii. 5, 15. 2. The one
   universal Church absolutely:—Col. i. 18, 24; Eph. i. 22; iii. 10, 21; v. 23,
   24, 25, 27, 29, 32. Compare also Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the
   Church, p. 571 ff.; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, pp. 116-118.

   [18] 1 Thess. ii. 14; cf. i. 1.

   [19] 1 Cor. i. 12, 13; vi. 9.

   [20] 1 Cor. iv. 17; vii. 17; xi. 2, 23; xvi. l.

   [21] Gal. iii. 28.

   [22] Rom. xi. 17.

   [23] Professor Ramsay traces a growth of definiteness in St. Paul’s use of
   the word “Church” from its application to a single congregation to its use
   to denote what he calls the “Unified Church,” and ingeniously connects the
   use in each case with political parallels. Thus the phrase “the Church of
   the Thessalonians” corresponds in civil usage to the ecclesia of the Greek
   city-state, while the phrase “the Church in Corinth,” suggesting as it does,
   “the Church” in other places as well as in Corinth, corresponds in civil
   usage to a universal and all-embracing political organization like the Roman
   Empire. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 124-7. Whether this be true or
   not, few will fail to find a connexion between the wide meaning the apostle
   puts into the word “Church” in the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the
   Colossians, and the imperial associations of the city from which he wrote.
   “Writing now from Rome, he (St. Paul) could not have divested himself, if he
   would, of a sense of writing from the centre of all earthly human affairs;
   all the more since we know from the narrative in Acts xxii. that he himself
   was a Roman citizen, and apparently proud to hold this place in the Empire.
   Here then he must have been vividly reminded of the already existing unity
   which comprehended both Jew and Gentile under the bond of subjection to the
   emperor at Rome, and similarity and contrast would alike suggest that a
   truer unity bound together in one society all believers in the crucified
   Lord.” Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 143.

   [24] “Not in abstraction or isolation, but in communion lies the very
   meaning of personality itself,” Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 5.
   “Fellowship is to the higher life what food is to the natural life—without
   it every power flags and at last perishes,” Hort, Hulsean Lectures, p. 194.

   [25] Eph. iv. 4-6.

   [26] This thought has been beautifully expressed by Dr. Sanday, The
   Conception of Priesthood (1898), pp. 11-14.

   [27] To the Smyrnaeans, 8.

   [28] Exegetes differ about the exact translation of 1 Cor. xii. 27: humeis
   de este sōma Christou A few (such as Godet) translate it: “a body of
   Christ”; by far the largest number translate: “the Body of Christ”; many
   “Christ’s Body,” leaving the exact thought indeterminate. It seems to me
   that the exact rendering, a or the, cannot be reached from purely
   grammatical reasoning. St. Paul is completing his metaphor or interpreting
   his parable, He has been emphasizing the fact that the Christian community
   at Corinth is an organism with a variety of parts differing in structure and
   function. It is a perfect organism in the sense that there is no necessary
   part lacking that is required for the purpose the organism is intended, to
   serve for its support or increase or for work. The life which pervades the
   organism in its totality and in every minutest part is Christ (Col. iii.
   14). The organism is the Body of Christ.

   [29] “Este potius . . . Christianus, pecuniam tuam adsidente Christo
   spectantibus angelis et martyris praesentibus super mensam dominicam
   sparge.” De Aleatoribus, 11; Harnack and v. Gebhardt, Texte u.
   Untersuchungen, V. i. 29.

   [30] Origen, De Or. 31:—“Kai angelikōn dunameōn ephistamenōn tois
   athroismasi tōn pisteuontōn kai autou tou kuriou kai sōtēros hēmōn dunameōs
   ēdē de kai pneumatōn hagiōn, oimai de, hoti kai prokekoimēmenōn; saphes de,
   hoti kai en tō biō periontōn, ei kai to pōs ouk eucheres eipein.”

   [31] Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis, 7; compare De poenitentia, 10;
   De pudicitia, 21; De fuga in persecutione, 14.

   [32] Rom. vi. 3-8.; Gal. iii. 27.

   [33] 2 Cor. xi. 23-27.

   [34] Compare Dobschütz, Die Urchristlichen Gemeinden, Sittensgeschichtliche
   Bilder (1902), pp. 18 ff.

   [35] Compare Robertson, Regnum Dei, p. 54:—“It (the kingdom of Christ) is
   the Kingdom of God in its idea—in potency and in promise: but visibly and
   openly not yet. This is St. Paul’s well-known paradox of the Christian life.
   Our whole task as Christians is to become what we are.”

   [36] As in 1 Cor. x. 32; xi. 22; and xii. 28; compare above p. 11, note 2,
   § iv. 1.

   [37] The principle which underlies the claim generally associated with the
   ambiguous phrase “apostolic succession” is so curiously like the demand made
   by “those of the sect of the Pharisees who believed” in the, days of St.
   Paul, that it can be most naturally expressed in the same language if only a
   “succession of bishops” takes the place of “circumcision.”

   [38] Gen. xvii. 13.

   [39] Gal. ii. 9: “And when they perceived the grace that was given unto me,
   James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me
   and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the
   Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision.”

   [40] See Sources of the Apostolic Canons, where ekklēsia appears in § 1 and
   adolphotēs in § 2; Texte u. Untersuchungen, II. v. 7. 12.

   [41] For universa fraternitas, see the tract De Aleatoribus, 1; Texte u.
   Untersuchungen, V. i. 11; omnis fraternitas, V. i. 14; compare Tertullian,
   Apologia, 39; De praescriptione, 20; De pudicitia, 13. For pasa hē
   adolphotēs, see 1 Clem. ii. 4; and Harnack’s note on the passage; also 1
   Peter ii. 17.

   [42] Acts xi. 30; cf. xii. 25.

   [43] Col. iv. 16; where St. Paul asks that his letter be read to the Church
   of Laodicea.

   [44] 1 Thess. iv. 9-11.

   [45] Rom. xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xvi. 19.

   [46] Rom. xvi. 21-23; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Gal. i. 2; Phil. iv. 21, 22; Col. i.
   1, 2.

   [47] 2 Cor. i. 1.

   [48] 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Acts xix. 10.

   [49] Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, p. 274.

   [50] 1 Thess. iv. 1O.

   [51] 1 Cor. xvi. 1.

   [52] 1 Cor. x. 32; xii. 13; Rom. iii. 29.

   [53] Rendall, The Pauline Collection for the Saints, Expositor, Nov; 1893.
   For St. Paul’s conception of what was meant by “fellowship” and the methods
   he took to make it visible, see Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age of the
   Christian Church (Eng. Trans.) I. p. 46 ff.; II, pp. 307-9; and Ramsay, St.
   Paul the Traveller, pp. 54, 130 ff.

   [54] Acts viii. 14-27.

   [55] Acts xi. 22, 23.

   [56] Some Anglican divines make strange deductions from the truth that the
   authority which belongs to the Church comes from above. They at once infer
   that inasmuch as the authority comes from above it cannot come directly to
   the whole Christian society; but must come through an official class of
   ministers who act as a species of plastic medium between our Lord and His
   people. Strange how Gnostic and Arian ideas banished from the creeds of the
   Church linger in thoughts about Orders! Then by a confusion of ideas they
   transfer the phrase “from above” to the human sphere, and make it an
   essential idea of legitimate ecclesiastical rule that it must be invariably
   communicated from a higher to a lower order of ministry! Why should
   authority imparted through the Christian Society be regarded as “from
   beneath,” as of the earth earthy?

   [57] Ephes. v. 23; Col. i. 18.

   [58] “There is a tone of loving reverence and worship in the words ‘Thou art
   the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ They answer to our Lord’s picture of
   the spiritual experience of His disciples in His great intercessory prayer;
   ‘I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world;
   Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have kept Thy word.
   Now they know that all things, whatsoever Thou hast given Me, are from Thee;
   for the words which Thou gavest Me, I have given unto them; and they
   received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they
   believed that Thou didst send Me.” Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the
   Church, p. 169.

   [59] Isaiah xiii. 20, 22. Compare Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 223.

   [60] Matt. xxiii. 2, 3, 13:—hoti kleiete tēn basileian tōn ouranōn
   emprosthen tōn aithrōpōn.

   [61] Rev. iii. 7:—tade legei ho hagios, ho alēthinos, ho echōn tēn klein
   Dabid, ho anoigōn kai oudeis kleisei, kai kleiōn kai oudeis anoigei.

   [62] John xx. 22, 23:—kai toûto ei̓pṑn e̓nephúsēsen kaì légei au̓tois,
   Lábete Pneuma Hagion an tinōn a̓phēte tàs a̔martías, a̓phientai
   (apheōntai Ti., W. H.) autois, án tinōn kratēte kekrátēntai.

   [63] “The main thought which the words convey is that of the reality of the
   power of absolution from sin granted to the Church and not of the particular
   organization through which the power is administered. There is nothing in
   the context to show that the gift was confined to any particular group (as
   the apostles) among the whole company present. The commission must therefore
   be regarded as properly the commission of the Christian society, and not as
   that of the Christian ministry (cf. Matt. v. 13, 14). The great mystery of
   the world, absolutely insoluble by thought, is that of sin; the mission of
   Christ was to bring salvation from sin; and the work of the Church is to
   apply to all that which He has gained. Christ risen was Himself the sign of
   the completed overthrow of death, the end of sin, and the impartment of His
   life necessarily carried with it the fruit of His conquest. Thus the promise
   is in one sense an interpretation of the gift. The gift of the Holy Spirit
   finds its application in the communication or withholding of the powers of
   the new life. . . . The promise, as being made not to one but to the
   Society, carries with it of necessity . . . the character of perpetuity: the
   society never dies. . . . The exercise of the power must be placed in the
   closest connexion with the faculty of spiritual discernment, consequent on
   the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Westcott, Gospel of St. John, p. 295.

   [64] Cf. 1 Peter iv. 10: “According as each hath received a gift,
   ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of
   God.”

   [65] The relations of the Twelve to the Church of Christ are strikingly
   brought out by Dr. Hort in his Christian Ecclesia, pp. 23-41. On the title
   apostle he says: “Taking these facts together respecting the usage of the
   Gospels, we are led, I think, to the conclusion that in its original sense
   the term Apostle was not intended to describe the habitual relation of the
   Twelve to our Lord during the days of His ministry, but strictly speaking
   only that mission among the villages, of which the beginning and the end are
   recorded for us.” . . . “If they (the Twelve) represented an apostolic order
   within the Ecclesia then the Holy Communion must have been intended only for
   members of that order, and the rest of the Ecclesia had no part in it. But
   if, as the men of the apostolic age and subsequent ages believed without
   hesitation, the Holy Communion was meant for the Ecclesia at large, then the
   Twelve sat down that evening as representatives of the Ecclesia at large;
   they were disciples more than they were apostles.”

   [66] St. Paul in his account of the appearances of our Lord after His
   Resurrection distinguishes between the Twelve and apostles; 1 Cor. xv. 5-8;
   cf. below, pp. 74-85.

   [67] Matt. x. 40; cf. Luke x. 16; Matt. xviii. 5; Mark ix. 37; Luke ix. 48.

   [68] Acts i. 23; vi. 5.

   [69] Acts xi. 22.

   [70] On the conduct of St. Peter at Caesarea, Acts xi. 1-4; on the opinions
   and practices of St. Paul, xv. 12, 22-29, and whatever differences may be
   found in the account of the proceedings in this chapter and in St. Paul’s
   statement in the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal. ii. 1 ff.) there is no
   question that both recognize the supremacy of the assembly of the Church.

   [71] 1 Cor. v. 3-5; Gal. vi. 1.

   [72] The censure inflicted on the member of the Corinthian Church who had
   disobeyed the Apostle Paul was carried by a majority: 2 Cor. ii. 6. hē
   epitimia au̔́tē hē hupo tōn pleionōn.

   [73] Rom. xii. 1: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
   to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, which
   is your reasonable service (tēn logikēn latreian humōn).” The thought
   expressed is that the Christian should consecrate the whole personality,
   body, soul and spirit to God; and thus all service whether of work or
   worship became a sacrifice. Compare Ps. li. 15-17.

   [74] Heb. xiii. 15.

   [75] Phil. ii. 17.

   [76] Paul’s great collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem is an
   offering: Acts xxiv. 17; so is the contributions which the members of the
   Church at Philippi sent to the apostle: Phil. iv. 18.

   [77] Heb. xiii. 16.

   [78] Thusiai pneumatikai: 1 Pet. ii. 5; thusia zōsa: Rom. xii. 1; cf. Phil.
   ii. 17.

   [79] Rom. xv. 16.

   [80] Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p. 183.

   [81] Compare Letter of the Smyrnaeans on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14:
   “Then he, placing his arms behind him and being hound to the stake, like a
   goodly ram out of a great flock for an offering, a burnt sacrifice made
   ready and acceptable to God, looking up to heaven, said: O Lord God
   Almighty. . . .”

   [82] Aristides, Apology, 15: “And if any among the Christians is poor and in
   want, and they have not overmuch of the means of life, they fast two or
   three days, in order that they may provide those in need with the food they
   require.” A favourite phrase to describe widows and orphans was “the altar
   of God” on which the sacrifices of almsgiving were offered up. It is used by
   Polycarp, To the Philippians, 4; also in the Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 26
   and iv. 3, of the orphans, the old and all who were supported by the
   benevolence of the faithful. Tertullian says of the widow: “aram enim Dei
   mundam proponi oportet,” Ad Uxor. i. 7.

   [83] Clement of Alexandria spiritualizes the Old Testament sacrifices to
   make them the forerunners of Christian prayers. “And that compounded incense
   which is mentioned in the Law, is that which consists of many tongues and
   voices in prayer . . . brought together in praises with a pure mind, and
   just and right conduct, from holy works and righteous prayer,” Strom. vii.
   6. In the same chapter he says: “For the sacrifice of the Church is the word
   breathing as incense from holy souls, the sacrifice and the whole mind being
   at the same time unveiled to God.”

   [84] Dialogue, 117.

   [85] The conception of a mutilated sacerdotalism, where one part of the
   Christian worship is alone thought of as the true sacrifice, and a small
   portion of the fellowship—the ministry—is declared to be the priesthood, did
   not appear until the time of Cyprian, and was his invention.
     _________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II

  A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN APOSTOLIC TIMES

   Can we, piercing the mists of two thousand years, see a Christian Church as
   it was in Apostolic times—a tiny island in a sea of surrounding heathenism?
   Our vision gets most assistance from the Epistles of St. Paul, which not
   only are the oldest records of the literature of the New Testament, but give
   us much clearer pictures of the earliest Christian assemblies for
   edification and thanksgiving than are to be found in the Acts of the
   Apostles. The more we study these epistles the more clearly we discern that
   we must not project into these primitive times a picture taken from any of
   the long organized churches of our days. On the other hand, we can see many
   an analogy in the usages of the growing churches of the mission field. This
   is not to be wondered at. The primitive church and churches growing among
   heathen surroundings have both to do with the origins of organization.

   For one thing, we must remember that the meetings of the congregation were
   held in private houses; [86] and as the number of believers grew, more than
   one house must have been placed at the service of the brethren for their
   meetings for public worship and for the transaction of the necessary
   business of the congregation. We are told that in the primitive church at
   Jerusalem the Lord’s Supper was dispensed in the houses, [87] and that the
   brethren met in the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, [88] in the house
   of James the brother of our Lord, [89] and probably elsewhere. At the close
   of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul sends greetings to three, perhaps
   five, groups of brethren gathered round clusters of distinguished Christians
   whom he names. One of these groups he calls a “church,” and the others were
   presumably so also. [90] The account of Saul, the persecutor, making havoc
   of the Church, entering every house and haling men and women to prison,
   reads like a record of the persecution of the Huguenots among the
   house-churches of Reformation times in France, or like raids on
   house-conventicles in the Covenanting times in Scotland. It becomes evident
   too as we study these early records that when it was possible, that is, when
   any member had a sufficiently large abode and was willing to open his house
   to the brethren, comparatively large assemblies, including all the
   Christians of the town or neighbourhood, met together at stated times and
   especially on the Lord’s Day, for the service of thanksgiving. Gaius was
   able to accommodate all his fellow Christians, and was the “host of the
   whole Church.” [91]

   Traces of these earliest house-churches survived in happier days. The ground
   plan of the earliest Roman church, discovered in 1900 in the Forum at Rome,
   is modelled not on the basilica or public hall, but on the audience hall of
   the wealthy Roman burgher, and the recollections of the familiar
   surroundings at the meetings in the house-churches probably guided the
   pencil of the architect who first planned the earliest public buildings
   dedicated to Christian worship. [92] Old liturgies which enjoin the deacon,
   at the period of the service when the Lord’s Supper is about to be
   celebrated, to command the mothers to take their babies on their knees,
   bring [93] with them memories of these homely gatherings in private houses,
   which lasted down to the close of the second century and probably much
   later, except in the larger towns. [94]

   It is St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, who gives us the
   most distinct picture of the meetings of the earliest Christian communities.
   The brethren appear to have had three distinct meetings—one for the purposes
   of edification by prayer and exhortation, another for thanksgiving which
   began with a common meal and ended with the Holy Supper, [95] and a third
   for the business of the little society.

   1. In his description of the first the apostle introduces us to an earnest
   company of men and women full of restrained enthusiasm, which might soon
   become unrestrained. We hear of no officials appointed to conduct the
   services. The brethren fill the body of the hall, the women sitting
   together, in all probability on the one side, and the men on the other;
   behind them are the inquirers; and behind them, clustering round the door,
   unbelievers, whom curiosity or some other motive has attracted, and who are
   welcomed to this meeting “for the Word.”

   The service, and probably each part of the service, began with the
   benediction: “Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
   Jesus Christ,” which was followed by an invocation of Jesus and the
   confession that He is Lord. [96] One of the brethren began to pray; then
   another and another; one began the Lord’s Prayer, [97] and all joined; each
   prayer was followed by a hearty and fervent “Amen.” [98] Then a hymn was
   sung; then another and another, for several of the brethren have composed or
   selected hymns at home which they wish to be sung by the congregation. [99]
   Several of these hymns are preserved in the New Testament, and one is
   embodied in one of our Scotch paraphrases: [100] —


   To Him be power divine ascribed,

   And endless blessings paid;

   Salvation, glory, joy, remain

   For ever on His Head:


   Thou hast redeemed us with Thy Blood,

   And set the prisoners free;

   Thou mad’st us kings and priests to God,

   And we shall reign with Thee,


   *   *   *   *   *


   To Him that sits upon the throne

   The God whom we adore,

   And to the Lamb that once was slain;

   Be glory evermore. [101]

   After the hymns came reading from the Old Testament Scriptures, and readings
   or recitations concerning the life and death, the sayings and deeds of
   Jesus. [102] Then came the “instruction”—sober words for edification, based
   on what had been read, and coming either from the gift of “wisdom,” or from
   that intuitive power of seeing into the heart of spiritual things which the
   apostle calls “knowledge.” [103] Then came the moment of greatest
   expectancy. It was the time for the prophets, men who believed themselves
   and were believed by their brethren to be specially taught by the Holy
   Spirit, to take part. They started forward, the gifted men, so eager to
   impart what had been given them, that sometimes two or more rose at once and
   spoke together; [104] and sometimes when one was speaking the message came
   to another, and he leapt to his feet, [105] increasing the emotion and
   taking from the edification. When the prophets were silent, first one, then
   another, and sometimes two at once, began strange ejaculatory prayers, [106]
   in sentences so rugged and disjointed that the audience for the most part
   could not understand, and had to wait till some of their number, who could
   follow the strange utterances, were ready to translate them into
   intelligible language. [107] Then followed the benediction: “The Grace of
   the Lord Jesus be with you all”; the “kiss of peace”; and the congregation
   dispersed. Sometimes during the meeting, at some part of the services, but
   oftenest when the prophets were speaking, there was a stir at the back of
   the room, and a heathen, who had been listening in careless curiosity or in
   barely concealed scorn, suddenly felt the sinful secrets of his own heart
   revealed to him, and pushing forward fell down at the feet of the speaker
   and made his confession, [108] while the assembly raised the doxology:
   “Blessed be God, the Father of the Lord Jesus, for evermore. [109] Amen.”

   Such was a Christian meeting for public worship in Corinth in apostolic
   times; and foreign as it may seem to us, the like can be still seen in
   mission fields among the hot-blooded people of the East. I have witnessed
   everything but the speaking “with tongues” in meetings of native Christians
   in the Deccan in India, when European influence was not present to restrain
   Eastern enthusiasm and condense it in Western moulds.

   The meeting described by the apostle is not to be taken as something which
   might be seen in Corinth but was peculiar to that city; it may be taken as a
   type of the Christian meeting throughout the Gentile Christian Churches; for
   the Apostle, in his suggestions and criticisms, continually speaks of what
   took place throughout all the churches. [110]

   It is to be observed that if the apostle finds fault with some things, he
   gives the order of the service and expressly approves of every part of it,
   even of the strange ejaculatory prayers. [111] He gives his Corinthian
   converts one broad principle, which he expects them to apply for themselves
   in order to better their service. Everything is to be done for the
   edification of the brethren, and the first qualification for edification is
   that all things be done “decently and in order,” for God is not a God of
   confusion but of peace. [112] He gives examples of his principle. The
   prophets were to restrain themselves; they were to speak one at a time, and
   not more than two or three at one meeting; [113] and those who prayed “in
   tongues” were to keep silence altogether unless some one who could interpret
   was present, for it is better to speak five words with understanding than
   ten thousand in a tongue. The women too who had the gift of prophecy were to
   use it in private, and not start forward at the public meeting and deliver
   their message there. So far from finding fault with the kind of meeting
   described, St. Paul seems to look on the manifestation of these gifts of
   praise, prayer, teaching, and prophecy, within the congregation at Corinth,
   as an evidence that the Christian community there was completely furnished
   within its own membership with all the gifts needed for the building up in
   faith and works. [114]

   What cannot fail to strike us in this picture is the untrammelled liberty of
   the worship, the possibility of every male member of the congregation taking
   part in the prayers and the exhortations, and the consequent responsibility
   laid on the whole community to see that the service was for the edification
   of all. When we consider the rebukes that the apostle considered it
   necessary to administer, it is also somewhat surprising to find so few
   injunctions which take the form of definite rules for public worship, and to
   observe the confidence which the apostle had that if certain broad
   principles were laid down and observed, the community was of itself able to
   conduct all things with that attention to decency and order which ensured
   edification.

   Our wonder is apt to be increased when we remember the social surroundings
   and conditions of these Corinthian Christians. They were a number of
   burghers, freedmen and slaves, who, as their names show, were mostly of
   Roman origin, gathered from the wealthiest and most profligate city on the
   Mediterranean. The population of Corinth was as mixed as that of Alexandria.
   At Cenchrea, on the eastern shore of the isthmus, the wealth of Asia and
   Egypt poured in, and was sent off to Rome and Italy from Lechaeum, the
   western harbour. The flow of commerce brought with it the peoples, religions
   and habits of all lands. The religion of the city was a strange medley of
   cults Eastern and Western. Aphrodite and Astarte, Isis and Cybele, were
   among her deities; Romans, Jews, Egyptians and Phoenicians among her people.
   The familiar illustrations which the apostle uses in his epistles indicate
   the habits of the population. He speaks of the arena and the wild-beast
   fights, [115] of the theatre, [116] of the boxing match and the stadium
   race, [117] of the great idol-feasts and processions. [118] The city, we
   know, was honeycombed with “gilds”—religious corporations for the practices
   of the Eastern religions, and trades unions for the artizans and the seamen.
   The Christian society was gathered from all classes; from the poor and the
   slaves, [119] from the well-to-do like the city treasurer, [120] and an
   elder from the Jewish Synagogue; [121] it included ladies of rank like
   Chloe, [122] and men of abounding wealth like Gains. [123] It was this
   hcterogenous society, including so many jarring elements, that the apostle
   expected to develop into an orderly Church of Christ in virtue of the “
   gifts “ of the Spirit implanted within it.

   2. It is by no means so easy to get a clear picture of the second meeting of
   the Christian community—the meeting for thanksgiving—as it is to see what
   the meeting for edification was like. [124] With the latter we have only to
   remove the blemishes which the apostle found, and the vision of the meeting
   as he approved of it stands clearly before us. But the abuses which had
   corrupted the meeting for thanksgiving had so changed it, from what it ought
   to have been, that it could not serve what it was meant to do. The framework
   of the degenerate meeting and of the same gathering re-organized according
   to the apostle’s directions can easily be traced. The members of the
   Christian community in Corinth assembled together in one place, where they
   ate together a meal which they themselves provided; and this meeting ended
   with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Holy Supper was the essential
   part. The common meal and what belonged to it were accessories, the casket
   to contain the one precious jewel, the body to be vivified by this soul. It
   was the Holy Supper that really brought them together; but their conduct had
   made it impossible for them to be the Lord’s guests at His Table. [125] The
   apostle tells the Corinthians that their meeting could not be a Lord’s
   Supper nor even a love-feast if each ate his own meal and one was hungry,
   while another drank his fill. [126] The common meal showed that all the
   brethren belonged to one living organism which was the Church in Corinth, of
   which the Lord was the Head. Nothing could so wound this thought as making
   the distinctions between rich and poor, which had been done. It banished the
   whole idea of fellow-ship, and sensuality was introduced where, above all
   places, it ought to have been absent. [127] God had manifested His
   displeasure by sending sickness and death into the congregation. [128] The
   apostle lays down a general principle, and gives instances of its
   application, which if followed out will make the common meal a fitting
   introduction to the Holy Supper, and then shows how the Lord’s Supper itself
   is to be solemnly and fitly celebrated according to the commands of Jesus.
   If we take the principles which the apostle lays down and suggestions from
   other portions of the New Testament, with those which come from the earliest
   post-apostolic descriptions of similar meetings, we may perhaps venture to
   reconstruct the scene.

   The apostle shows that this meeting for thanksgiving is to be a social meal
   representing the fellowship which subsists between all the members of the
   brotherhood, because they have each a personal fellowship with their Lord.
   They are therefore to eat all together, and if anyone is too hungry to wait
   for his neighbours he ought to eat at home. It is also to be a fitting
   introduction for the Lord’s Supper, which both symbolises and imparts that
   personal fellowship with Christ which is the permanent basis of their
   fellowship with each other. This thought that the Holy Supper is to come at
   the end of it must dominate the meeting during its entire duration. From
   beginning to end the brethren are at the Lord’s Table and are His guests.

   The whole membership of the Church at Corinth met together at one place on a
   fixed day, the Lord’s day, [129] for their Thanks-giving Meeting. The
   meeting was confined to the member-ship; even catechumens, as well as
   inquirers and unbelievers, were excluded. The partakers brought provisions,
   according to their ability. Some of the brethren, who belonged to that
   honoured number who were recognized to have the prophetic gift, presided.
   [130] The food brought was handed over to them, and they distributed so that
   the superfluity of the rich made up for the lack of the poor. They also
   conducted the devotional services at the feast and at the Holy Supper which
   followed. The presidents began with prayers of thanksgiving for the food
   prepared for them and before them; [131] it was an evidence of the bounty of
   God the Creator; a pledge of His fellowship with them His creatures; a
   warrant for their continuous trust in His Fatherly care and providence; and
   a suggestion of the bounties of His redemption which were more fully
   symbolised in the Holy Supper which followed. [132] During the feast the
   brethren were taught to regard themselves as in God’s presence and His
   guests; but this did not hinder a prevailing sense of gladness, nor prevent
   them satisfying their hunger and their thirst; God the creator had placed
   the food and drink before them for that purpose. [133] It did prevent all
   unseemly behaviour, all unbrotherly conduct in speech or action, and it
   insisted on the absence of all who were at variance with their neighbours
   until the quarrel had been put an end to. [134] During the feast hymns were
   sung at intervals, and probably short exhortations were given by the
   prophets. [135] Then when all was decently finished the Holy Communion was
   solemnly celebrated as commanded by the apostle.

   3. It is to be remembered that the apostle regarded the community of
   Christians at Corinth as something more than a society for performing
   together acts of public worship, whether eucharistic or for prayer, praise
   and exhortation. It was a little self-governing republic. This made the
   third kind of meeting necessary. The common worship of the society,
   especially the eucharistic service, united it with the whole brotherhood of
   believers throughout the world, and showed it to be in the succession from
   the ancient people of God; [136] but it had a corporate unity of its own
   which manifested itself in actions for which the whole body of the
   Corinthian believers were responsible. This local unity took shape in the
   meeting of the congregation which is expressly called the “Church” [137] by
   the apostle, at which all the members apparently had the right of appearing
   and taking part in the discussion and voting—women at first as well as men.

   This meeting had charge of the discipline of the congregation and of the
   fraternal relations between the community and other Christian communities.
   Letters seeking apostolic advice were prepared and dispatched in its name;
   [138] it appointed delegates to represent the church and gave them letters
   of commendation, [139] and in all probability it took charge of the money
   gathered in the great collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem. [140] The
   whole administration of the external affairs of the congregation was under
   its control; and this was a work of very great importance, because it was
   this fraternal intercourse that made visible the essential unity of the
   whole Church of Christ.

   It exercised the same complete control over the internal administration of
   the affairs of the congregation. It expelled unworthy members; [141] it
   deliberated upon and came to conclusions about the restoration of brethren
   who had fallen away and showed signs of repentance. [142] It arrived at its
   decisions when necessary by voting, and the vote of the majority decided the
   case. [143] We hear nothing in the epistles of a common congregational fund
   for purposes common to the brethren; if such existed it was probably under
   the care of this meeting also.

   All these things implied independent self-government; and the apostle asks
   the brethren to undertake another task which shows even more clearly how
   independent and autonomous he expected the congregation to be. He censured
   Christians for bringing thei