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  DOCTRINAL HELPS
  by W.C. Morro
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A doctrinal reference guide covering the foundational teachings of the Christian
faith, beginning with how the Bible came to us. Dr. Morro explains the divisions
of Scripture, the languages of the Bible, and key doctrines in accessible terms.

  Chapters: 11

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. DH - 01-The Bible 01 � How We Got Our Bible
    2. DH - 02-The Bible 02 � Bible Dispensations
    3. DH - 03-The Bible 03 � The Bible as Devotional Literature
    4. DH - 04-The Bible 04 � Jesus Biblically Defined
    5. DH - 05-The Church 01 � The New Testament Church
    6. DH - 06-The Place of Christian Baptism
    7. DH - 07-The Church 03 � The Place of the Lord�s Table
    8. DH - 08-The Church 04 � The Place of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament Church
    9. DH - 09-The Church 05 � The Place of Missions in the New Testament Church
   10. DH - 10-The Church 06 � The Place of Christian Stewardship in the New Testament Church
   11. DH - 11-The Church 07 � The Disciples of Christ

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  CHAPTER 1: DH - 01-THE BIBLE 01 � HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE
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THE BIBLE I. HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE W. C. MORRO, PH.D. Our Bible is divided into
two parts. Such a division is necessary because of the difference in its
subject-matter. The first part is Jewish; the second part Christian. The
language of Christ implied that he was introducing a new order of things
(e.g.Matthew 5:17-18; Matthew 26:28; Luke 22:20, cf. John 1:17), and hence it
was natural for the writings which developed out of his system to be gathered
into a body distinct from the old. The former of these parts is known as the Old
Testament; and the latter, the New Testament. These names arose out of the
conceptions of the New Testament writers. Fundamental in the Jewish system is
the Covenant idea. The mutual relationship between God and Israel was fixed by
the Covenant between them. Hence Paul speaks of the books of Moses as the "Old
Covenant" (2 Corinthians 3:14). This term would naturally come to include all of
the Jewish writings in exactly the same way that the term Law did (John 10:34; 1
Corinthians 14:21).

It was also natural for the Christian writings to become known as the New
Covenant, for this term was applied to the Christian system by both Christ (Luke
22:20) and Paul (2 Corinthians 3:6). But the Greek word for Covenant also means
Testament, and in a well-known passage in Hebrews it is difficult to decide
whether the word should he translated by Covenant or by Testament (Hebrews
9:15-18). In the Latin, Testament was the meaning assigned in this and other
passages, so that when a Latin translation of the New Testament was made the
Greek word was uniformly translated testamentum. Hence the Jewish and Christian
writings came to be known as the Old and New Testaments. These names were
adopted as early as the second century after Christ and have remained in
constant use ever since. The Authors and Dates of Books. The books which
constitute the Bible were written at various times and by many authors. the
period from the writing of the first of these books to that of the last cannot
have been less than thirteen centuries. Most of this time was spent in producing
the books of the Old Testament. It came into existence slowly. The date of many
of these books and the names of their authors are now alike unknown. In many
cases the conjectures of earlier ages are our sole source of information and
these conjectures are historically improbable. In other cases we know the name
of the author and approximately the date when his book was written. According to
the Jewish manner of reckoning, their scriptures, our Old Testament, consisted
of twenty-four books. Josephus mentions only twenty-two books (Against Apion,
1:8), but 4 Esdras and other Jewish authorities know of twenty-four. Origen and
Jerome give the number of books in the Jewish scriptures as twenty-four.
Josephus probably considered Ruth to be a part of Judges, and Lamentations a
part of Jeremiah. Origen says this was done in his day (Euseb., VI. 25).

There were five books of Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy); eight books of the prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve, that is, the Minor Prophets, but
counted as one book); and eleven books of the Sacred Writings (Psalms, Proverbs,
Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel,
Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles). The division of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and
Ezra-Nehemiah into two books each belongs to later times. This added four more
books, and these with the eleven additional one, resulting from the resolving of
the Minor Prophets into twelve instead of one, brings the, total up to
thirty-nine, the number which we now count as composing the Old Testament.

According to Jewish belief the five books of the Law were written by Moses, and
this view was not dissented from till comparatively recent times. Jesus
evidently held to this view (Matthew 8:4; Luke 20:37; Luke 24:27; John 5:46;
John 7:19). A group of modern scholars have denied the Mosaic authorship and
assign these books to a later time than the traditional date. This is one of the
fundamental differences between the scholars who adhere to former views and
those who designate themselves as modern. The fatter class substitute a
plurality of authors for the single one, Moses, advocated by the former group,
and hold that the books are the result of a long historical process within which
they passed through many rescensions, taking finally the form in which we now
possess them. They hold that the earliest books from which were developed our
Pentateuch could not have been written prior to the eighth century, while the
completed form took shape subsequent to the Exile. Those who hold to the Mosaic
authorship believe them to have been written as early as the fourteenth century.
The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, were so named because these
persons were prominent in them. Their authors are not known. The books of
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were written by the prophets whose names they bear,
and this is true for the most part of the Minor Prophets. The poetical books,
like modern hymn books, were compiled from many authors. David certainly wrote a
number of the Psalms. The authorship and the date of most of the other books are
uncertain. They were all completed at some date between three and four hundred
years before Christ. The books of the New Testament were written within a hall
century. The earliest cannot have been written prior to 50 A.D. and the latest
was produced before 100 A.D. Hence unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament
was the product of one generation and of the spiritual impulse and uplift which
came from the establishment of the religion of Jesus. It is believed that these
books were the work of eight authors. The earliest was probably Paul’s first
Epistle to the Thessalonians, though according to one theory as to the date of
James, it is barely possible that this small book is earlier. I Thessalonians is
usually thought to have been written in 52 A.D. This, Paul’s earliest book, was
followed in order by II Thessalonians, in 53 A.D.; I Corinthians, II Corinthians
and Galatians in 57 A.D.; Romans the next year; Philippians, Philemon,
Colossians and Ephesians in 62 A.D.; I Timothy and Titus in 67 A.D., and II
Timothy in 68 A.D. These may not be the exact years of the writing of these
epistles, but this is their relative order and the approximate date of their
composition.

Somewhere near 65 A.D. Mark wrote the Gospel which bears his name. It is
believed on the testimony of Papias, an early Christian Father, to be
substantially the Gospel of Peter, for whom Mark acted as secretary. Somewhat
later, our first Gospel was written. Papias says that Matthew wrote the Oracles
(Logia) of Jesus in Hebrew, but our first Gospel was evidently composed in
Greek. For this and other reasons it is thought to be a rescension of Matthew’s
work. His name is not inappropriately attached to it. A few years after this the
third Gospel was written by Luke, "the beloved Physician," from material which
he carefully collected from those who had been eye-witnesses of the scenes
described (Luke 1:1-4). It is evident that he was not a personal follower of the
Lord. He also wrote Acts of Apostles (Acts 1:1). The fourth Gospel was written
late, probably not much before 100 A.D. by "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John
21:20; John 21:24). Gallons of ink have been consumed in the discussion as to
which disciple this was. While many stoutly deny this, the identification of him
with John, the son of Zebedee, has never lacked noble names. Since the opening
of the twentieth century the Unitarian. James Drummond; the Anglican, William
Sanday, and the Catholic, Theodore Calmes, have written in advocacy of this
position. The same hand that wrote the Gospel unquestionably penned the I, II,
and III Epistles of John. The author of the book of Revelation was also named
John, and although the style and language are very different from those of the
Gospel and the Epistles, these do not present insurmountable obstacles to the
belief that the author was one and the same person. All of these Johannine
writings were among the latest if not the very latest of the New Testament
books. The Epistle of James was written by James, the brother of the Lord, the
bishop of Jerusalem. The Epistle of Jude was written by his brother (Jude 1:1).
Both books were late, though their dates can be determined with no precision.
The Epistles of Peter must have been written late in the life of that apostle.
Of the genuineness of the first Epistle there is scarcely any doubt, but the
marked differences in style, language, and thought between it and II Peter have
led many scholars both ancient and modern to doubt the Apostolic origin of the
latter. It must be admitted that of all New Testament books it is the least
satisfactorily attested.

Inspiration.

One factor in the producing of these writings which must be considered is
inspiration. In the past a wrong method has been employed in determining the
nature of this. It has been customary to define carefully what inspiration is
and then explain the inspiration of the sacred writers and their productions in
conformity with this theory. A better method is to collect the facts which the
Bible states and clearly implies and induct the theory of inspiration from
these. What, then, are the facts? There are certain persons mentioned in both
the Old and the New Testaments who believed themselves to be guided in their
utterances by the Spirit of God. Repeatedly it is said that "The Lord spoke unto
Moses." Isaiah states that his book records the "vision" or the "burden" which
the prophet "did see" (Is. 1:1, 13:1) and he represents himself as speaking on
behalf of God. To Jeremiah "the word of the Lord came" (Jeremiah 1:2). Ezekiel
tells of a vision which appeared to him and he was made to eat a book, a
symbolical representation of the fact of his inspiration (2:8 to 3:3). He was
then addressed in the following words, "Son of man, all my words that I shall
speak unto thee receive in thy heart and hear with thine ears. And go, get thee
to them of the captivity . . . and speak unto them and tell them" (3:10, 11).
Micah speaking of himself says, "I truly am full of power by the Spirit of the
Lord, and of judgment and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression and
to Israel his sin" (3:8).

Other prophets were conscious of the same power (Nahum 1:1; Habakkuk 1:1; Haggai
1:1; Zechariah 1:1; Malachi 1:1). Paul repeatedly claims that he speaks for the
Lord (Acts 27:23; 1 Corinthians 2:16 cf. 1 Peter 4:11). In a preeminent degree
this was true of Christ. He spoke for God. This inspired utterance of prophet,
apostle, and the Christ naturally passed to their writings. This is the view
which Christ and the New Testament writers take of the Old Testament (Mark
12:36; Matthew 1:22; Matthew 15:4; Acts 1:16; Romans 3:2; Romans 9:25; Hebrews
1:1). There was also a growing conviction that the New Testament writings too
possessed this inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 3:15-16). It is evident
therefore that we are to attach to the holy men and to their writings an
inspiration from God. In this practically all believers are agreed, but there
has been large disagreement in the effort to define the mental state of those
inspired and the degree and nature of the authority which the inspiration
communicated to them. In all theories there is a tendency to gravitate towards
one or the other of two extremes. One is literalism, in which the mind of the
medium is dominated entirely by the Spirit; his faculties are under suspension
and are used by the Spirit as a player uses the strings of a harp. The tendency
of this theory is to make the very words and the cast of the sentence of the
scriptures to be the subject of inspiration. The other extreme tends towards
reducing the inspiration to that degree only which belongs to poetry, works of
art and of genius. Both extremes are incorrect. Somewhere between lies the
truth, but no theory of inspiration has ever been formed which includes all of
the truth or has proven to be all adequate induction of the facts. The truth is
that no Bible writer attempts to explain the process of inspiration. His sole
interest was in the fact that he proclaimed the truths of God. Two points should
be noted. First, inspiration did not destroy the individuality of the man. As
Augustine said, Inspiratus a Deo sed tamen homo ("Inspired by God, yet a man").
Paul remained Paul and Peter remained Peter. Inspiration did not interfere with
the marked personality of Isaiah nor cause him to write a style or "language of
the Holy Ghost."

Second, inspiration did not do away with the necessity of study, research, and
investigation in those subjects especially in which investigation could
determine the truth. Luke states that in writing a life of Christ, he received
his information from those who had been eye-witnesses and further that he
submitted it to a careful examination (Luke 1:1-4). Other truths were beyond
investigation and these were communicated by revelation.

Canons. The idea of the Canon of scripture is that there is a collection of
writings marked off as peculiarly sacred and as having divine authority. There
is both an Old Testament canon and a New Testament canon. Because the historical
process by which it was established is better known, the New Testament Canon is
considered first. No New Testament writer betrays any anticipations of a New
Testament canon. Inspiration did not reveal that certain books were to be
accepted as authoritative and divine and others as human and without authority.
The forming of the Canon was a purely human process, made necessary by certain
difficulties which the early church found besetting its life. The formation of
the Canon was most emphatically an historical process which developed gradually
and may be marked off into certain definite stages. No council was ever convened
to declare what books were canonical and what were not. Almost all of the
ancient councils made pronouncements as to what books were to be accepted as
canonical, it is true, but these declarations were simply statements of the
sentiments of the church on this topic at that time. They mark states of the
process and are of interest because they help us to trace the development of the
idea of the Canon. The first motive for a New Testament canon was the fact, that
there was a model for it in the Canon of the Old Testament. Another was to
determine what books were to be read in public worship. In some places there was
a laxness in this and in others a strictness. The feeling developed that the
books which were to he used in the worship of the church should be restricted to
those which were authoritative and would edify. But the most impelling reason
for the creation of a canon was the controversies which arose between the church
and certain heretical Gnostic sects. These sects had numerous books which
purported to be divine revelations. The Catholic Church retorted that these
books were without authority and very naturally was led to make a list of the
books which it believed to be authoritative. All others were naturally excluded.
For these reasons the New Testament canon was established. The Old Testament was
the scriptures of Christ and the first generation of his followers. The writings
of the early Christians were not at first recognized as scripture, but early in
the second century a distinction made between the writings of the Apostles and
other men. There followed lists of these books which were of apostolic origin.
The earliest known list is Marcion’s (140 A.D.) table of the Pauline Epistles.
Irenaeus (185 A.D.) recognizes four and only four Gospels. From near the close
of the second century comes the Muratorian Canon, which contains a list of the
New Covenant. A few of the New Testament books are omitted. Thus by 200 A.D. the
Canon was practically complete, though in certain sections some books were
doubted during the third and even as late as the fourth century.

About 325 A.D. Eusebius, the Father of Church History, describes the New
Testament of his time. He names all of the books which now compose our New
Testament, stating, however, that James, Jude, 2 Peter 2:1-22 and 3 John, were
questioned by a small minority. He then gives a list of books that were
decidedly rejected. Among them are Hermas, Acts of Paul, Apocalypse of Peter,
Barnabas, etc. Why was one class accepted and the other rejected? As said above,
it was not because of the arbitrary verdict of external authority. The
selections were made for a reason which is analogous to that process of
reasoning by which we decide whether a book is an English classic, except that
in the latter case the ground of decision is the literary qualities and the
style, while in the former it was the religious value and the apostolic origin.
That which commended itself to the church as possessing divine qualities was
placed within the Canon. Otherwise it was rejected. As Westcott says, the Canon
was fixed by a "divine instinct." The origin of the Old Testament Canon is
obscure because of lack of knowledge concerning it. No doubt the motives which
gave rise to if were similar to those which produced the Canon of the New
Testament. From the scanty information at our command it seems probable that the
Canon of the Old Testament was permanently fixed much later than one would
suppose. A council of Rabbis was held at Jamnia about 90 A.D. and the question
was then debated whether Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs were canonical.
Esther also was questioned at even a later date than this. Josephus in writing
near the end of the first Christian century gives a list of the recognized
Jewish sacred books and offers an explanation as to why they were canonized.

It is therefore practically certain that, with the exception of an occasionally
expressed doubt concerning a few books, the Old Testament Canon was fixed before
the time of Christ. In the case of the majority it of the Old Testament books
this was done much earlier. Probably the familiar division of these books into
the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms (or writings) indicates stages in the
canonization of the Jewish sacred hooks. This threefold division is earliest
mentioned in the prologue to Ecclesiasticus (about 200 A. D.). The formation of
the Canon, especially of the books of the Law and of the Prophets at least, must
have been largely completed at that time. The Jewish story that Ezra completed
the Canon must be set aside as mythical.

Language. The Old Testament books were written in Hebrew except portions of Ezra
and Daniel, which were in Aramaic, a kindred language. The Old Testament books
were translated into Greek when the number of Greek speaking Jews became
sufficiently great to demand this. This Greek translation is known as the
Septuagint. According to tradition it was made during the reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphus (284-247 B.C.) The translation was certainly complete by the time
of the writing of Ecclesiasticus (1:1). Attached to this translation were a
number of books which were originally written in Greek. These books compose our
present Old Testament Apocrypha, but they were never regarded by the Jews as of
equal value to the books of the Old Testament. The New Testament books were all
written in Greek; one or two of them may have been compiled from memoranda which
were written in Aramaic, though it is certain that no one is a translation from
an Aramaic original. In the early Christian church both the Old and the New
Testament scriptures were usually read in Greek. This is true even in countries
where Latin was the usual language, such as Rome itself. In time, however,
Christianity found its way into lands where Greek was not freely spoken and a
Latin translation became a necessity. The first Latin translation was probably
made in Northern Africa. In time this translation became unsatisfactory on
account of corruptions which crept into it through the free way in which scribes
altered it, and a new translation into Latin became necessary. This was made by
Jerome in the last quarter of the fourth century. It was partly a revision of
the Old Latin translation and partly a translation from the Greek and Hebrew.
The Apocryphal books were translated and embodied in this Latin Bible, which is
called the Vulgate. The Catholic Council of Trent (1546 A.D.) declared this
Latin Vulgate to be "sacred and canonical" and anathematized any one who did not
accept it and all the books contained in it This accounts for the fact that the
Roman Catholic Bible contains the Apocrypha and that it is the doctrine of this
church to accept these books as equally as authoritative as the books of the Old
Testament. All Protestant Bibles are translated directly from the Hebrew, which
does not contain the Apocrypha. Hence no Protestant church regards the
Apocryphal books as scripture.

Manuscripts.

Until printing was invented, which was in 1454 A.D. the Bible was preserved in
hand-written manuscripts upon either parchment, vellum, or papyrus. In making
these copies the scribes were seldom accurate and so the earliest, carefully
written manuscripts are of great value because presumably they preserve the
language more exactly as it was expressed in the original autographs. The oldest
Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament date from the ninth Christian century.
All now in existence are practically identical even almost to the very letters.
This shows that the scribes must have been extremely careful in making their
copies. To this fact the Talmud bears witness. The variations from our Hebrew
Bible of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the old translations show that in earlier
times the same care was not exercised. This scrupulous care in making copies of
the Hebrew Bible began probably shortly before 100 A.D.). At this time the
Rabbis evidently selected the manuscript which seemed to them to be best and all
subsequent copies were made from it. The Greek manuscripts of the New Testament
and the Septuagint are much older. The total number of such manuscripts runs
considerably over a thousand, but many of these are from later times.

There are two great manuscripts of the entire Bible (though one has suffered the
loss of some leaves) which date from the fourth Christian century. One is in the
Vatican at Rome and is called the Codex Vaticanus and the other is in St.
Petersburg and is called the Codex Sinaiticus because it was discovered in a
monastery on Mount Sinai by Tischendorf in 1844 A.D. Both of these manuscripts
were written with great care and are of priceless value. There are also two
manuscripts of the fifth century, the Codex Alexandrinus, now in England, and
the Codex Ephraemi, now in Paris. They are of much less value than the two
previously mentioned. The Codex Bezae now in the Cambridge University library,
is of the sixth century. It is of questionable value since it differs in many
ways from the standard text. Besides these there are a number of fragments of
quite early date, one small fragment of the Gospels belonging to the third
century, and recently discovered papyrus fragments of this century and even of
the second. A recently discovered manuscript of the Gospels now in Detroit and
known as the Freer manuscript is early and valuable, probably as early as the
fourth century. The Vulgate translation was made by Jerome in 384-6 A.D. and the
earliest manuscript of it dates from the early eighth century. More than 8,000
manuscripts of the Vulgate are in existence. When printing was invented in the
fifteenth century the Bible was printed in all languages and the copying of
manuscripts ceased. Prior to this the English translation of the Gospel of John
made by Bede, the translation of the entire Bible by Wycliffe, and the other
early translations of portions of the Bible existed in manuscript only. The
English Bible. A number of the European continental countries possessed a
printed Bible before England. In Germany, for example, the Bible had been
printed eighteen times before Luther’s in 1522. The first portion of the English
Bible was not printed till 1525; the entire Bible in English was not printed
till 1535; and it was not till 1538 that it was printed in England. The history
of the English Bible began with Tyndale and not with Wycliffe. It was his work
more than that of any other man to give its characteristic shape to the English
Bible. He studied in both Oxford and Cambridge and his mind became filled with
the "new learning" of these times. After leaving the University he was involved
in many controversies, in one of which he vowed that if God permit he would make
it possible for the ploughboy to know more of the scriptures than was then known
by the learned men of England. This determined that his translation should be
for the people and not for scholars.

He had to leave England to carry on his work of translation and in Cologne in
1525 he had printed ten sheets of the New Testament when he was stopped by the
authorities. He managed to escape and completed his task in Worms, so that in
1526 the English New Testament was for sale in England. He kept busy preparing
further editions of the New Testament and in translating the Old Testament till
his death in 1536. Tyndale made his translation from the Greek and Hebrew,
though he compared it with the Latin. He was probably assisted by Miles
Coverdale, who did at least continue his work after Tyndale’s death. It was he
that printed the first complete English Bible, which was in 1535. He was not so
thorough a scholar as Tyndale and disclaims the distinction of making an
original translation. He possessed one gift, however, which amounted to genius.
He had all ear for delicacy, beauty and sonority of expression, and to him more
than to any other we are indebted for the rhythm and music of our English
version.

There followed in 1537 a translation bearing the name of Thomas Matthew, which
is probably all alias for John Rogers. This was not an original translation but
a compilation from the work of Tyndale and Coverdale. It is notable for the
reason that it was issued "with the kinges most gracyous lycence." In 1539 a new
edition was issued by Taverner. It was little more than a revision of the work
of his predecessors and exerted but little influence. In the same year there was
issued the Great Bible, which differs from its predecessors in that it was not
merely authorized by royal authority but printed under the direction of the
government. It was planned by Cromwell and was printed under the direction of
Coverdale. It was the first genuine authorized version of the English Bible.

There were many other editions of the Bible printed during the second half of
the sixteenth century. Among them were the Genevan Bible which was issued by the
Calvinistic exiles from England; the Bishops’ Bible revised by the Bishops and
other learned men of England; and the Reims and Douai version which is Roman
Catholic in its origin and was printed to counteract the effect of the numerous
Protestant translations. In 1604 was begun the revision of the Bible which was
printed in 1611 and is in a supreme sense the authorized version. It was planned
by James I and it was the result of an effort to have one uniform translation.
The work of translation was left to a committee of forty-seven scholars who were
chosen because of their scholarship and without regard to party. All previous
translations were drawn upon. Two years and nine months were occupied in
completing the revision and nine months more in preparing it for the press.
Probably no translation of the Bible into any tongue has been so excellently
done. Its worth is almost beyond praise. In 1870 the Convocation of Canterbury
appointed a committee to consider the subject of revision. This was felt to be
necessary because of the changes in the English language and the advance in
Greek and Hebrew scholarship. A committee to undertake tile task of revision was
appointed which was authorized to invite scholars of other religious bodies to
assist. Two companies, one for the revision of the Old Testament and the other
for the revision of tile New Testament, were soon at work.

Similar companies were formed in America to whom the work of the English
companies was submitted for consideration. They also made suggestions which were
in part adopted and were printed entire as an appendix to the work. In one
respect the translation of the New Testament was a marked advance over any
previous English translation. It was based upon a reconstructed Greek text which
more perfectly represents the original. Eleven years were required to complete
the translation of the New Testament and three additional ones for the Old
Testament. Much criticism has been expended on the revision but it has surely
though slowly established its suitability for public and private use. The
American company agreed not to publish a version of the Bible embodying their
suggestions until after fourteen years had passed. This company maintained its
organization and perfected its work so that in 1901 there was issued the
American Standard revision embodying all the suggestions made originally by the
American Company and some others. This has very largely superseded the original
revision of 1881 and 1885.


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  CHAPTER 2: DH - 02-THE BIBLE 02 � BIBLE DISPENSATIONS
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THE BIBLE II. BIBLE DISPENSATIONS

J. J. HALEY The four ages or periods in the history of human redemption, spoken
of as dispensations of Religion, are the Patriarchal, the Jewish, the Christian,
and the Millennial; for all practical purposes, but three, as the millennium is
but the final conquest and further extension of the Gospel age. These economies
of God’s dealings with the race mark the different stages in the progress of
divine revelation and human salvation. The age of the Patriarchs, extending from
Adam to Moses, and lasting, approximately, 2,500 years, according to the Usher
chronology, is the dispensation of foundations and promises. The Jewish or
Mosaic age, embracing a period of 1500 years, from Moses to Christ, is the
dispensation of preparation and education. The Christian age, sometimes called
the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, covering that period of time reaching from
the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Christ to his second coming, is
the dispensation of realization and the fulness of time. The thousand years of
our Lord’s personal reign on earth, called the millennium, which will extend
from the beginning of his second manifestation to the close of the present world
order of human affairs, may be regarded as the dispensation of consummation and
final victory. As this age is still prophetic and does not come within the scope
of possible historical treatment, it will not be considered at length in this
paper. The dispensational book of the Bible is the epistle to the Hebrews. This
inspired production of the first century, Pauline in substance if not in
authorship, traces the history of God’s redemptive manifestation from the
initial "in" of Genesis to the final "amen" of Revelation. The author’s point of
view is that of the "Covenants," which he compares, somewhat in detail, for the
purpose of demonstrating the superiority of Christianity and the Christian age
over all preceding developments, as the finished product is more perfect than
the different stages of its growth. The terminology of the Hebrew writer is
sacrificial and legal. He describes the Christian religion in terms of the
Jewish temple and priesthood. These priestly phrases, temple metaphors, and the
familiar words of a ceremonial faith, addressed to the Jewish people who could
understand them, are everywhere penetrated and illuminated by spiritual and
ethical conceptions of the New Age under Jesus Christ. The historical and
spiritual attitude of the writer is pentecostal. Looking back from the viewpoint
of the ratification of the New Covenant and the beginning of the church on the
day of Pentecost, his enlarged vision takes in the entire field of a gradually
unfolding redemption, and a progressive revelation, from Eden to the descent of
the Holy Spirit, fifty days after the resurrection of Christ; and from this
beginning of the New Dispensation on through the reign of Christ in the church
to his second coming without a sin offering in order to complete eternal
salvation. All dispensational distractions, peculiarities, and problems converge
and culminate at Pentecost or emerge from it.

Whether we look from this point of view back to the beginning or forward to the
end, the history of this phenomenal day in the evolution of the Kingdom of God
puts a key into our hands for the solution of all fundamental problems.

1. The Covenant Problem.

2. The Kingdom Problem.

3. The Problem of the Holy Spirit.

4. The Problem of Spiritual Power.

5. The Ecclesiastical Problem--the Beginning of the Church.

6. The Problem of Salvation.

7. The Problem of the Ordinances.

I. THEPROBLEM OF THECOVENANTS. In our book of the dispensations, chapter eight,
the writer gives its an analysis of the characteristic differences between the
old economics and the new under forms of the Mosaic and Christian Covenants. The
purposes and peculiarities of the two are made to stand over against each other
in contrast as proof and illustration of the superiority of the New Age under
the reign of Christ.

1. The essential inwardness and moral righteousness of the new covenant in
contrast to the external and ceremonial character of the old. "I will put my law
in their inward parts and write it in their hearts" (ver. 10). The covenant of
circumcision, a patriarchal institution, was in the flesh; that of Mt. Sinai was
inscribed on tables of stone; that of Mt. Zion on fleshly tables of the heart,
the moral nature of man. As Paul said to the Corinthians: "For as much as ye are
manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ, ministered by us, written not
with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tables of stone, but in
fleshly tables of the heart" (2 Corinthians 3:3). The terms of admission to the
old legal and ceremonial dispensations were to be born in Abraham’s house or to
be bought with his money. The only conditions that ever conferred the right of
initiation into the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants including proselytes and the
natural descendants of Abraham, were fleshly descent, property, and
circumcision. The terms of induction into the new and better covenant, the
church of Christ, established on better promises, reach down to the deepest
springs of the regenerate life, the new birth, the renovation of the soul, the
purification of the heart by faith and love. This antithesis so vividly drawn is
between a legal and a spiritual dispensation of religion, between the law and
the Gospel, between the bondage of the letter and the freedom of the spirit. Law
is compulsory and operates from without; the Gospel of the new covenant is
voluntary and operates from within. Law rules by force; the gospel of the grace
of God rules by love. Law, therefore, can punish but it cannot reform; the
gospel reforms, but it does not punish. Law is coercive; the gospel is
persuasive. Law appeals to the fear of physical punishment; the gospel appeals
to reason and conscience, and has behind it a fund of motives drawn from two
worlds. The law may keep outward order but it cannot produce an inward change.
It may cage the lion but cannot change him into a lamb. Compulsion may force a
temporary change of conduct; but it cannot produce a permanent change of
character. There can be no change of heart, no transformation of character, no
inspiration or exaltation of life, unless it begins from within. This is the
philosophy of the declaration, I will put my law in their inward parts and write
it in their hearts, and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a
people."

2. The universality of the knowledge of God in the new covenant against a
limited and partial knowledge under the old, "They shall not teach every man his
fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying know the Lord, for all shall
know me from the least to the greatest of them" (ver. 11). This universal
God-knowledge which shall characterize the New Dispensation is predicated only
of the covenanters; not everybody in the world shall know God, but everybody in
the covenant shall know him. This stands out with undoubted clearness when we
consider the contrast in the mind of the writer. The old covenant with which he
is here contrasting the new had thousands of unconscious infants in it who did
not know their right hand from their left, and who had to be taught by their
fellow citizens and their brethren to know the Lord, as soon as they were
capable of apprehending religious truth; and there were also multitudes of
wicked men who disregarded and rejected the moral provisions of the covenant,
and hence had no experimental knowledge of God. In sharp and striking contrast
to these classes, the one ignorant of God from unconsciousness and the other
from wickedness, the writer says, in the new and better covenant there will be
no necessity to teach its subjects to know the Lord, for God-knowledge is the
first condition of entrance, hence all shall know Him from the least to the
greatest.

3. Complete redemption in the plenary remission of sins over against the partial
"and temporary pardon of the legal dispensation of Moses. "For I will be
merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more" (ver. 12).
The sinless purity and perfect spirituality of the High Priest of the New Age,
his perpetuity in office and the nature of his offering, enabled him to free the
conscience of the sinner by a perfect pardon, and to become the author of
eternal, not temporal salvation, to all them that obey. The forgiveness of sins
under the Aaronic priesthood was temporary and partial. The business of a legal
scheme of salvation is to inflict penalties for all failures to keep the law,
not to be merciful to the iniquities of its subjects. In the redemptive purpose
that God was working out through the ages the chief design of the law was to
demonstrate the impotency of legalism to free the human soul from the
consciousness of sin. This could only be done by the sacrifice of our Lord’s
humanity on the altar of his divinity, perfecting thereby the divine arrangement
that enables God to have mercy on our unrighteousness and to remember our
iniquities no more forever.

4. The New Covenant had been enacted when the Hebrew epistle was written. "He is
(present tense) the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been (past tense)
upon better promises" (Hebrews 8:6). As the Christian Dispensation embodies and
represents the New Covenant, the covenant as a matter of course began with the
dispensation. Hence when the church was organized on the Day of Pentecost, A.D.
34, the covenant was established and ratified. This can be shown by a comparison
of the conditions and characteristics sties of the covenant with the facts that
transpired on Pentecost as recorded in the second chapter of Acts. a. "With the
house of Israel and the house of Judah" (Hebrews 8:8).

"Jews devout men," "Ye men of Israel hear these words" (Acts 2:5; Acts 2:22). b.
"I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts" (Hebrews
8:10).

"When they heard this they were pricked in their heart" (Acts 2:37). c. "All
shall know me from the least to the greatest" (Hebrews 8:11).

"As many as gladly received his word were baptized" (Acts 2:41). d. "Their sins
and their iniquities I will remember no more" (Hebrews 8:12).

"For the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). e. The shedding of Christ’s blood
connected with the establishment and ratification of the New Covenant (Matthew
26:18; Matthew 26:27-28). So the new and better covenant prophesied by Jeremiah
and historically described by the writer of the Hebrew letter was incorporated
into the Christian Dispensation on the Day of Pentecost, the beginning of our
Lord’s earthly reign through his church.

II. THEPROBLEM OF THEKINGDOM OFGOD. The conception of the reign of God over
human affairs, known as the theocratic government of the world, is as old as
humanity, as old at least as God’s first revelation to man. The monotheistic
revelation of Genesis, the disclosure to the earthly patriarchs of the one true
and living God, his personality and righteousness, brought with it the right of
the Infinite to reign and rule in and through and over all men who on earth do
dwell. The religion of the patriarch was individual, domestic and tribal. Like
all eastern sheiks he was the father of his family, the shepherd of his flock,
the prince of his tribe, the king of his kingdom. As representative and
mouth-piece of God he exercised the functions of prophet, priest, and king to
his contemporary descendants. In the capacity of prophet he was the organ of
revelation and the teacher of his children; as priest he erected altars and
offered sacrifice in atonement for the sins of his people; as prince of his
tribe he exercised authority and commanded obedience in the name of God. Under
the patriarchal regime the conditions of salvation were faith, obedience, and
sacrifice. The dispensation of Moses brought with it the reorganization of the
theocratic life and government of the patriarchs, in the living of the law, in
the consolidation of the twelve tribes into a single nationality, in the
distribution of patriarchal offices into distinct and separate classes of
official representatives of the divine administration. Sages arose who taught
the people wisdom, prophets who interpreted the law, and delivered God’s
messages direct from Himself, the inspired men of the nation; priests who
officiated at the altar of sacrifice and devotion, judges who ruled in the place
of God till the inauguration of the monarchy four hundred years after Sinai. The
evolution of the kingdom under the law had reached a stage of growth and promise
in the days of Daniel which led him to prophesy that the God of heaven, in the
days of the king of the Roman Empire, would set till a kingdom, supernatural,
universal, perpetual, indestructible, so dominant and powerful as a moral force
as to grind to pieces all opposing kingdoms. When Christ began to announce: "The
Kingship of God is at hand," "the reign of heaven draws near" there can be
little doubt that he was profoundly impressed with Daniel’s prophetic ideal of
the future theocracy, then due to appear. Nor call the fact be called in
question that Christ’s interpretation of the new kingdom to be "set up" "in the
days of these kings," went far beyond Daniel’s as a revolutionary if not
original conception. The magnificent and incomparable ideal of the universal
reign of God in the human soul, a kingdom of heaven coextensive with humanity, a
perpetual fountain of inspiration, lifting men ever-more into higher and diviner
relations, a glorious brotherhood bound together by ties of allegiance to a
common fatherhood, with no creed but love to God and man, and no law but the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus--this vastly enriched and spiritualized
conception of the kingdom originated with the prophet of Nazareth, and has no
parallel in human history. "A kingdom founded in peace and maintained without
carnal weapons, a kingdom in the world and yet not of the world, a kingdom
within the sphere of other kingdoms yet threatening them with no violence,
infringing on the prerogative of no earthly potentate or king, and looking to no
revolution to further its interests or to extend its dominion," such was the
wonderfully beautiful and amazingly attractive conception of Christ, born in his
own soul, or brought with him from heaven, and absolutely without a precedent in
the annals of time. The Messianic reign began to materialize in the organic
manifestation of the Kingdom of the first Pentecost after our Lord’s
resurrection. The church is established, the theocracy becomes a Christocracy,
and the kingdom enters upon the last stage of its earthly career.

III. THEPROBLEM OF THEHOLYSPIRIT. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament is all
indirection for God. The Spirit of God is the life of God, his vital energy, his
inmost self. As the spirit of a man is the man, so the Spirit of God is God. The
inspired men of the Old Testament did not conceive of the Holy Spirit as a
person distinct from God. All of the references to the Spirit in both of the Old
Dispensations may be easily remembered as effluence, affluence and influence.
The Spirit of God in the Old Scriptures is represented as the energy of God
flowing from him, or flowing upon things and persons, or flowing into the
personality of men. In creation the Spirit was effluence and affluence in the
manifestation of the energy and vitality of God. It flows from God, it flows
upon the waters, and it creates life and gives expression to the mind of God in
the order it brings out of chaos. In the prophets the prevailing aspect of the
Spirit is affluence. It came upon Balaam, upon frenzied Saul, upon Elisha in
double portion. In addition to these there is a higher view in the Old Testament
when the vital energy of Jehovah becomes an influence in the prophets. Joseph
was "a man in whom the Spirit of God is." This usage of the prophets in which
they refer to the Holy Spirit as the essence of Deity, God in terms of energy,
in forms of vital activity, continues through the Old Testament and up to the
14th chapter of John’s Gospel in the New. Here for the first time "it" becomes
"he." The Holy Spirit in the New Testament is the same as the Spirit of God in
the Old Testament up to the 16th verse of the 14th chapter of the fourth Gospel.
In the annunciation according to Matthew the angels say: "Holy Spirit shall come
upon thee, power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." The absence of the
article before "Holy Spirit" and "power" might at least have arrested the
attention of Trinitarian students. It was natural that in the long course of
ascription of personal attributes to the Spiritual energy and activity of God it
should come at last to be clothed in the characteristics of complete
personality. There was deity and personality in the Old Testament view of the
Holy Spirit, but it was the deity and personality of God--not of another person
distinct from him. The phenomena of Pentecost in connection with the coming of
the Spirit, sustain, in several aspects of its work, the Old Testament and
synoptic view, not yet definitely settled into the language of personality. The
first manifestation of the Spirit was the sound from heaven, as of the rushing
of a mighty wind filling the house in which the apostles were assembled, a
symbol doubtless of the free, forceful, and independent action of the Spirit in
the inspiration and salvation of men. The miraculous tongues appeared "parting
asunder like as of fire," a figure descriptive of the illuminating and purifying
power of the divine energy present in the disciples. "And they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave
them utterance." The mental illumination and moral transformation of the
apostles by this experience certainly had intelligence and personal force behind
it, but when the Spirit appears as it does in this connection in the form of a
baptismal element, this particular aspect of its work cannot be conceived as
personal. The most conspicuous, significant, and far-reaching event, that marks
the beginning of the Christian Dispensation here at Pentecost, is the appearance
of the Holy Spirit as a baptizing element and Christ as the administrator of a
new spiritual baptism, at once the characteristic distinction and peculiar glory
of the New Reign of God in Christ. In all subsequent time as far as the inspired
record carries us the Holy Spirit is referred to as the personal leader,
advocate, comforter, and sanctifier of the New Age.

IV. THEPROBLEM OFSPIRITUALPOWER.

"But ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall
be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and unto the
uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Of the Pentecostal fulfillment of this
promise we have spoken in part, but the dynamic power of the new spirituality in
the work of saving mankind, requires further emphasis and illustration.

All three of the synoptic writers give fresh accent to the fact that Christ’s
work is to be distinguished by a communication of the vital energy of God so
full and forceful as to be comparable to a baptism in or a filling of the soul
with the divine nature, the very Spirit of God, over against, for purposes of
comparison, the ministry of John the Baptist, whose characteristic symbol of
authority was baptism in water. The fourth gospel carries the same contrast,
except that John refers to the chief work of the two administrations as a birth
instead of a baptism. The Harbinger’s baptism, a birth of water, Christ’s
baptism, a birth of the Spirit, the same in meaning as the synoptic comparison
of John’s baptism in water and Christ’s baptism in the Holy Spirit, both binding
on Nicodemus, and both binding on us, with certain modifications in reference to
the first; but in reference to the second, as we have already indicated,
Christ’s supreme distinction is as the administrator of and baptizer in the Holy
Spirit. The phrase "baptize in the Holy Spirit," is simply a metaphor drawn from
John’s literal baptism in water. Baptize in the Greek language means to be
enveloped in the baptizing element, and as candidates for the Harbinger’s
immersion were completely in the hands of the baptizer, and were totally
submerged in the element of his baptism, so the subject of Christ’s baptism, the
human spirit, is completely in the hands of the administrator of the spiritual
sacrament, our Divine Lord, and hence the very name, baptism in, not of, the
Holy Spirit. When a man yields himself absolutely and wholly to Jesus Christ the
Spirit comes into his soul with overwhelming power, the vital energy and life of
God takes possession of him, he is filled with it, and his soul is baptized in
it, and this is the baptism of power in the Holy Spirit, and it is not
temporary, but eternal, beginning with Pentecost. When a man is penetrated,
illuminated, dominated, possessed, controlled, and energized by the Holy Spirit,
he is the subject of our Pentecostal spiritual sacrament administered by the Son
of God himself, and we can say of him adequately and truly that he is pure in
heart, holy in character and mightily effective in service for God and humanity.
The incarnation brought God into human life, the resurrection of Christ opened
the spiritual world, which poured itself into this world in a stronger and
steadier tide than had ever been known before, so that the very air enveloping
the earth became instinct with God; the atmosphere of Palestine was electric
with spiritual power, so that a touch at almost any point brought the impact and
shock and thrill of the new life. To be sure we have to reckon with the
miraculous phenomena of the baptism in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost
and afterwards, but this was not the principal thing. It was neither the
permanent, the spiritual, nor the convincing element of that baptism. The mental
illumination of the apostles, their instantaneous moral transformation, the
spiritual transfiguration that came to them that day, the more than wonderful
change from ignorance to knowledge, from cowardice to heroism, from wavering
weakness to the stuff that martyrs are made of--this was the arresting feature
of Pentecost, second only to the greater miracle of converting five thousand men
in two sermons. Tongues and other supernatural signs were temporary and
occasional manifestations, which might or might not follow the filling of the
Spirit. Not only did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as instructed by the Harbinger
and the Savior himself, regard this abundant action of the Spirit, figuratively
called a baptism, as the characteristic and universal feature of Christ’s reign,
but Peter, interpreting the prophecy of Joel, so regards it; and Paul said to
the Thessalonians: "Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with
the Spirit," and to the same people in another place: "Our gospel came not unto
you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much
assurance." We are not surprised, in view of considerations like these, that
Christian thinkers should refer to the Christian age as the Dispensation of the
Holy Spirit.

V. THEECCLESIASTICALPROBLEM--THEBEGINNING OF THECHURCH. The old efforts, to
trace the church, as an organized institution, to the Garden of Eden, to the
time of Abraham, to the dispensation of Moses, to the days of John the Baptist,
have been universally discredited. The Christian Church is now known to be the
exclusive product of the Christianity of Christ and the apostles, and to have
come into organized existence on the first Pentecost after our Lord’s
resurrection.

Jesus declared during his personal ministry that he would build his Church on
the rock of his supernatural character and claims, and one of the apostles
writing long after Pentecost affirmed that the one foundation had been laid in
Zion. On this initial day of the New Age, when disciples had been made by the
preaching of the gospel, the next step in the divine procedure was the
organization of a Christian Society. This new society was not an ordinary social
compact for selfish ends, but an organism as vital as the organism of the human
body. After personal conviction of the truth, and a personal confession of faith
in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, repentance toward God, and personal
submission to the initiating ordinance of baptism, men and women were received
into the new social order, the Church of the living God, which thus became the
pillar and foundation of the truth. This first congregation of Christians, the
prototype of all the rest, and of the Christian Society at large, was a body of
converted and consecrated men and women called together to develop and
strengthen the spiritual life of its members, and to bear witness for Christ in
the salvation of their fellow men. The ritual of this first apostolic church was
the perfection of simplicity and spiritual opportunity: "And they continued
steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, in the breaking of bread,
and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). The form of government and administration adopted,
under the fostering care of the Holy Spirit, was all amalgam of the Jewish
Synagogue and Greek democracy. The elders or older men came by a kind of natural
prescription to exercise authority in the village and in the Synagogue. The
Jewish Christian Church was modeled after the Synagogue; hence its
superintendence by old men, its eldership rule. This method of rule, however,
was modified by the introduction of Greek democratic ideals. The election of the
seven men to serve tables was the first recorded concession to democracy. The
ultimate authority under God rested with the people, and this carries with it by
necessary implication the right of initiative, referendum, and recall, so
popular in political circles of our day. Officialism in the first church was
reduced to its lowest terms. An office was not an empty title or an instrument
of authority. It was a service to be rendered, a work to be done, nothing more
and nothing less than this. Elders bishops or pastors were appointed to teach,
train, and develop the spiritual life and usefulness of the people; deacons were
called to look after the finances and benevolences of the congregation, the
business and philanthropic side of its work; evangelists were sent forth as
recruiting officers to convert sinners and organize churches. This was a
complete and perfect organization for the ends and purposes for which the church
had been brought into existence; there is nothing to be added to it and nothing
to be taken from it till the end of time. This is the instrument of the Kingdom
of God, created by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, to mark and
signalize the beginning of the New Dispensation, the third and last but one, of
the ages covered by the annals of human redemption.

VI. THEPROBLEMS OFSALVATION.

Deliverance from sin and its consequences, and the restoration in man of the
lost image of God, has been the outstanding problem of all dispensations of
religion. The first Messianic promise given at the time of the Fall, was a
promise of salvation; "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head."
All promises given to patriarchs and prophets, caught up and foreshadowed by the
law, were redemptive in purpose and outlook. All provisions and practices of the
Divine Legation of Moses contemplate as their end the salvation of man in body,
soul and spirit. John’s theme in the wilderness was the baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins.

Christianity as expounded and interpreted by Christ and the apostles looks to
the one supreme consummation of delivering man from his sins and making him
righteous. All redemptive adumbrations, promises and prophecies of the Old
Testament run like a golden thread through the two preceding dispensations,
culminating on the day of Pentecost in the going out of the law, and the coming
in of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its accomplished and realized completeness.

All time before had been prophetic, preparatory, and educational until the
fullness of the time, Peter standing up on the great Pentecostal day, after the
crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and coronation of King Messiah, he
proclaimed the message of salvation, complete and universal, to the men before
him. An analysis of this inaugural sermon of the New Age gives us for the first
time the gospel way of salvation.

1. Absolute belief and trust in the crucified, resurrected, ascended and
coronated Prince of Life, announced by the Holy Spirit from heaven to be both
Lord and Christ.

2. Repentance of the individual and the actual turning away from sin.

3. Baptism of the penitent believer in the name of Jesus Christ unto the
remission of sins.

4. Gift of the Holy Spirit, the promised unction to those who shall all know.

5. The universality of the promise of salvation to those who comply with its
terms. At this beginning time and beginning place of the new church of the Holy
Spirit, it was inevitable and altogether fitting that the gospel in its
simplicity, fullness and power should be laid down by inspiration for help and
guidance for all time to come. No honest preacher or inquiring sinner need ever
go wrong in his understanding of gospel conditions of salvation, as long as the
historic message of Pentecost lies before him in an open Bible.

VII. THEPROBLEM OF THEORDINANCES. No change in the progress of the dispensations
has been more marked and manifest than the change in religious rites and
symbols. Symbolic and ceremonial religion, beginning with the patriarchs, grew
into an elaborate and ornate ritualism in the time of Moses, and especially in
the later Judaism of the time of Christ. The Levitical law with its more than
six hundred ordinances, with many added traditional forms, had overlaid and
smothered out the spirituality of the Kingdom with symbols and ceremonies. The
beginning of the new Spiritual reign on the Day of Pentecost witnessed the
abrogation of the ceremonial law, and all of the elaborate symbolism of the
Mosaic economy, and gave particular prominence to the doctrine that the Kingdom
of God is not in rites and ceremonies, but in righteousness and peace and joy in
the Holy Spirit. The law that went forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord
front Jerusalem, was not a sacramental interpretation of religion. Only two
ordinances were incorporated into the new regime that went forth from the first
Pentecost. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and these in the light of all that
followed are to be regarded as spiritual, not ritual sacraments. Whether or not
John’s baptism was an adaption of Jewish proselyte baptism, the baptism of the
New Covenant, first administered by the apostles on the day of Pentecost, was
taken over in subject, action and design from the administration of John.

Christian baptism, therefore, as it appears here at the beginning of the New
Age, with the authority of Christ stamped upon it, was immersion of a penitent
believer into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for the
remission of sins (Acts 2:38). The outward form of this sacrament was the
symbolic and pictorial method of giving expression to the moral and spiritual
act of self-surrender to God and self-consecration to His service. Inward moral
cleansing of which baptism is the outward sign and visible expression, is a
condition precedent to the remission of sins, and therefore not inconsistent
with an ethico-spiritual religion.

"The breaking of bread," known as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, like
baptism, was incorporated into the worship of the primitive church, beginning
with the organization of the mother church in Jerusalem. It was instituted by
our Lord the evening before he suffered and these were the sacramental words he
spoke. "This is my blood in the new covenant shed for many for the remission of
sins; drink ye all of it." "This is my body broken for you, do this in
remembrance of me." "This impressive and beautiful ordinance was observed at
first in a daily sacramental or sacrificial meal from house to house. When the
rapid growth of the disciples and the disruption of the church by persecution
rendered the daily observance of this holy institution no longer possible, it
was identified with the Lord’s Day and observed once a week. Since this union
the Lord’s Day has commemorated the Lord’s resurrection, and the Lord’s supper
his crucifixion, and those two are the fundamental redemptive facts of our holy
religion. After all, however, the greatest difference between Christianity and
preceding dispensations of faith, and the most luminous ground of its
superiority, is the personality of Jesus our Master and Savior. "I am the way,
the truth and the life; no man cometh to the Father except by me.


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  CHAPTER 3: DH - 03-THE BIBLE 03 � THE BIBLE AS DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE
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THE BIBLE III. THE BIBLE AS DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE

J. H. GARRISON The Bible is sided Book. Its historical value is beyond
computation. As literature, it is without a rival whether in prose or poetry. As
a book of authority in religion, it has no peer. Its doctrinal value also puts
it in a class by itself. Its appeal to the human imagination and its to rouse
the human intellect to loftiest efforts, are best known to those who are the
most faithful students of its pages. But I speak of the Bible as devotional
literature--its appeal to the heart and its cultural value to the spiritual
nature. It will be acknowledged by all that if the Bible had been lacking in
this quality, it never could have gained the place it holds in the affections of
the as the world’s supreme literature. Neither could it have exercised the
influence which it has had on the life of mankind. "Out of the heart are the
issues of life," and it is only as the heart is purified that we can see God
either in his Word or in his world. It is to be feared that the Bible has been
searched far more for proof-texts to establish our theories than it has been
perused for the spiritual food which it is able to supply to the hungry soul. At
this time of revival in biblical study, it is well to keep in mind the various
worthy purposes for which we may study it, chief among which is its power to
quicken and develop the spiritual life on its devotional side. In what ways, it
may be asked, does the Bible contribute to the devotional life? We shall attempt
to answer this question from our own point of view, not unmindful of the fact
that other students of the sacred volume would answer it differently in form,
though perhaps in substance the answers would not differ so materially.

1. The personnel of the Bible, or its biographical sketches, seem to us to
possess great value in this direction. We cannot read of Adam and Abel, Enoch
and Noah, and the patriarchs, Joseph and David, of Moses, Elijah, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, of Paul and Peter, John, and all the great women mentioned both in the
Old and the New Testaments without feeling that in these portraits of living
characters, containing their faults as well as their virtues, God is showing us
the elements of character which He approves and those which He disapproves, and
is thereby forming our ideals of what we ought to be and do.

It is not difficult to discern in these character-sketches the elements which
have contributed to their greatness or usefulness, and to see that it was not so
much the intellectual superiority of the persons mentioned, as their faith,
their humility, their courage, their devotion to God, and to the right, which
gave them a place of honor in the world’s most sacred literature. For this
purpose it would be an excellent plan to make a character-study of the men and
women whose names and deeds have such a place in the Bible as to entitle them to
such study.

2. The Psalms, which constituted the hymn book of God’s ancient people, are a
rich source of spiritual culture. In our hymns the heart speaks, and our deepest
religious emotions find utterance. The Psalms live, and are in use today in the
public worship and in our private devotional study, because they express the
praise, the gratitude, the thanksgiving of devout souls to God, and we use them
as vehicles by which to express the same sentiments in our own hearts. They grew
out of the actual human experience of men struggling with the same great
problems of sin and of suffering, of sorrow, of death, of forgiveness, and of
retribution, with which we are struggling.

These sacred writers found in God the chief source of their joy, of their hope,
of their strength, and to him they poured out their hearts in expressions of
penitence, of gratitude, of thanksgiving and of joy. When will men cease to read
and admire the Twenty-third Psalm, known as the "Shepherd Psalm?" Never, so long
as the human soul feels the need of God’s kindly care and guidance, and has
experienced some of the comfort in reposing upon his strength and wisdom. As
long as the human heart hungers for the living God, the Forty-second Psalm will
be cherished as a rich expression of its own deep desires, and its fire of
devotion will be kindled by such expression. The penitent sinner will always
find in the Fifty-first Psalm the language of true penitence, and a noble
vehicle for a penitent prayer. Psalm Thirty-two will be found a most appropriate
expression of thanksgiving for such forgiveness. The longing for the house of
God finds a classic expression in the Eighty-fourth Psalm, and also in the One
Hundred and Twenty-second. Literature does not furnish a nobler expression of
human gratitude for divine blessings than is found in the One Hundred and Third
Psalm; nor has the human mind ever conceived or expressed in sublimer strains
the glory and majesty and wisdom of the material universe than those contained
in the One Hundred and Fourth Psalm. But why need we specify? There is not a
chord in the human heart but is touched and played upon in these Psalms, and not
a worthy emotion that does not therein find expression. Many of these Psalms are
prayers, and the element of prayer enters very largely into the most of them. It
is such prayer, too, as recognizes the immanence of God in his world, and his
continual presence as "a present help in every time of need." No truth can give
greater vitality to prayer and inspire so deep a spirit of reverence as the
reality of God and his nearness to man. It is a truth which has been too much
lost sight of in the emphasis which has been laid upon the laws of the universe.
The Bible recognizes these laws, but it sees in them but the constant outgoing
and expression of God’s will, and does not banish Him from the universe over
which he reigns because he operates through laws, some of which we know and some
of which are unknown. The prayers in these Psalms, and throughout the Bible,
bring us face to face with the living God, and deepen that devotional element,
the lack of which mars so much of our modern religious life. Prayer, in its
highest and truest conception, is the merging of the human will into the divine.
It is the soul’s highest effort to become attuned to the Infinite. The secret of
its power is that it establishes a relation of reciprocity with God so that our
human emptiness is filled with the divine overflow of love and truth and grace.
Prayer is faith stretching out its hand to take hold of the hand of God. It is
also all outlet for the devout soul in expressing its love and gratitude for
blessings received. It is not only asking, but giving, receiving, adoring,
aspiring, becoming.

3. The Bible develops the spiritual nature and deepens the devotional life
through the lofty ideals which it holds up before us. It does this partly
through heavenly visions and partly through ideals of excellence realized in
human life. Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and others caught a vision of God’s
holiness and righteousness, which caused them to seek renewed cleansing, and to
become thoroughly dissatisfied with their former selves. It gave them new ideals
of righteousness, and made them prophets of God for their generation. Paul had a
vision of the risen Christ, which scattered all his former doubts and laid him
low in the dust of humility and penitence. No book in all literature holds up
such lofty ideals of righteousness as are found in the Bible. It lifts up the
standard of living, not only for the individual and the Church, but for nations
as well. It concerns itself with the establishment here on earth of the kingdom
of God, in which God’s will shall be done even as it is done in heaven. Because
the Bible reveals a holy and loving God, it is the world’s masterpiece in
devotional literature.

Hence, after all, the highest ideal of life and character in the Bible, or in
the power of the human mind to conceive, is furnished to us in the life and
character of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. That life is the greatest
force in the moral universe. It is the great transforming power which is at work
in the world today. It is, therefore, the supreme power, both for the
impartation of spiritual life to the souls of men and the development of that
life, to its highest capacity. It is Christ in the Bible that gives it its
supreme place in the world’s literature, and makes it the highest cultural power
for the souls of men. Across the pages, by type and prophecy in the Old
Testament, and by historical narrative in the New, there moves the stately
figure of One whose coming was the opening up of a new fountain of life for the
world, and whose life and teaching have established the kingdom, which is to be
both universal and everlasting. To study the life of such a One, to be brought
into personal relations with him, and into company with the apostles and saints
who appear on the pages of the New Testament, is to have heaven begin here on
earth, and the soul to be taking on those features which shall fit it for
companionship with God and the elect spirits in the life everlasting.

Yonder on a mountain top, in Palestine, occurred a wonderful transfiguration
scene, in which Jesus, in the act of praying, was transfigured until his
garments were white as light and his face shone like the sun. In that scene
witnessed by three; of his apostles, and by Moses and Elijah, who appeared in
glory, we have portrayed to it, the transfiguring power of Christ over the lives
of those who keep company with him and share in his fellowship and service. It
was a fore-glimpse of what God intends to make of us through Christ. To read the
Bible believingly, reverently, obediently, not being "disobedient to the
heavenly visions" which God gives to us, is to begin here on earth that moral
and spiritual transfiguration whose climax is the glorified image of Christ.


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  CHAPTER 4: DH - 04-THE BIBLE 04 � JESUS BIBLICALLY DEFINED
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THE BIBLE IV. JESUS BIBLICALLY DEFINED ROBERT PERRY SHEPHERD

Jesus Christ is the one Person in human history to whom the history of all
persons points. In his personality, all personality, both of God and man, finds
concrete definition and full expression. In our age it has come to be somewhat
common to say that Christ is the center of history. It is fitting that we seek,
even in an all too brief and inadequate way, to discover why this is true, from
the standpoint of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. A character so unique to
thought, sufficient to love, and efficient to conscience and will, is the
consummation of the Scriptural message to man. It will be helpful to every
thoughtful mind to lay hold more clearly and closely on this Person. The
composite portrait of the Person given in the fourfold Gospel must of necessity
be the basis of study. Reverently and humbly we shall seek to apprehend the mind
of the Lord as he lived among men, and to see the words of the Gospel record as
he saw them--expressions of his own mind of filial devotion toward God and
fraternal compassion toward man. Only by the kinship of like-mindedness may we
get behind the words to the mind which gave them forth; to see the Jewish past,
its promise and prophecies, its Scriptures and sacrifices, its law and its
religion, as Jesus saw them and related himself to them; to penetrate yet deeper
into his consciousness of God and man and see how he related himself to them; to
see with Jesus the new order of thought and life, the new society and fellowship
he introduced and instituted on earth, is the path which must be trod. To
invigorate the knowledge so gained by living it and teaching it is the joyous
task of Christian faith, the privilege of individual discipleship, the
obligation of collective responsibility laid upon the Church of Christ. To
indicate the bare outlines and initial steps of this pathway of intimate
companionship is before us.

Jesus as Related to God. The portrait drawn of the wonderful Person by Matthew
and Mark and Luke is from the standpoint of human conditions, circumstances and
setting. As in one picture from different angles of vision they set forth the
incarnation as "the divine life of man," our human nature perfected, exalted,
lifted to the plane of divine energy and power in the midst of our human
relations and limitations. John, on the other hand, portrays the same wonderful
Person as living on the earth "the human life of God." The very beginning of a
true Christian theology is to combine these portraits--not by any mechanical
superimposition of one picture upon the other, but by a process of growth.
Indeed, the process is that of a synthesis possible only to spiritual sympathy.
Failure to arrive at such a subjective view-point, and the consequent lack of
this sympathy and synthesis, has been the blight of our dogmatic and systematic
theologies.

I. JESUSKNOWSGOD. In a very solemn affirmation Jesus raised himself above all
prophets and teachers, as regards both the kind and degree of his knowledge of
God. His claim is unequivocal and imposing. "No man knoweth the Father, save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him" (Matthew 11:27). Such
knowledge as a Son only could have of the Father’s inmost heart, knowledge true,
full and perfect, Jesus represents himself as possessing. Higher and completer
knowledge is impossible. Knowing himself to have this understanding, Jesus
earnestly and vigorously resented the questioning of his knowledge of God (John
8:54-55).

II. JESUSEMBODIESGOD.

Only the insanity of a disordered human mind or the sanity of Deity can make
this claim, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). "Thou, Father, in me, and I
in Thee--" (John 17:21-23). Brushing aside the unrealities of mysticism, it must
be noted that Jesus throws down the gauntlet of sufficient proof of his claims
in a most practical and workable form. The passage is the one justification of
both Christ and the Church of Christ for the exalted claims of the Christian
faith. "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do them,
though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know and understand
that the Father is in me, and I in the Father" (John 10:37-38). Divine energy
embodied discloses itself in works worthy of God.

III. JESUS ISCO-EQUAL WITHGOD.

"The Father worketh hitherto, and now I am working" (John 5:17; John 5:19-21;
John 5:26-27). With these words Jesus begins the most surprising announcement
ever made to human hearing. Throughout the self-disclosure Jesus identifies
himself and his activities with the energies of the ever-present God; he claims
creative power in himself because of his unique relation to God as a Son; he
claims to be the source of life and the agent of divine judgment. Human reason,
imagination, judgment, every faculty of intellect, stop short in such a
presence. He must be rejected and God dishonored (John 5:23; John 12:42-47), or
accepted as "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28-29).

IV. JESUS IS THEONEREVEALER OFGOD.

Man has no need deeper and higher than a working, practical knowledge of God. A
teacher who can lead man direct to the Father will never be old-fashioned or
out-of-date. Philip voiced the quest, the universal cry of the human heart (John
14:8), and the universal answer stands for all time and all ages: "I am the way,
and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father but by me." "Take my
yoke upon you and learn of me" (John 14:6; Matthew 11:27-30).

Jesus as Related to Man.

Philosophical speculation, seeking to construe the "two natures" of Jesus Christ
in terms accurate and adequate to the satisfaction of reason, has wrought havoc
with a fundamental fact of the incarnation. A simple, sublime, and transforming
truth has too long been obscured and lost from popular view. Our human nature,
the present, patent consciousness of self, which is in each of us, is of such a
quality that the divine nature, the very being of the God eternal, can blend
with it without, on the one hand, degrading God, or, on the other hand,
destroying the conscious identity of self in man. To this conception classical
philosophy has been, and will be, forever blind. The "wisdom of this world"
dismissed Paul at Athens with airy mockery (Acts 17:32). From that day to this
philosophy, as such, cannot and dare not face the related facts of incarnation
and resurrection. For in proportion as reason attempts to construe mind and
nature in the light of these truths, there is no stopping place short of
Christian theism and Christian faith.

I. JESUSKNOWSMAN.

It seems never to have occurred (until after the resurrection), to those who
were with him in the flesh that Jesus was anything else, either less or more,
than a man. His own friends thought him mildly insane (Mark 3:21). His brothers
did not believe in him (John 7:3-5). The chief charge against him, indeed, was
that, being simply human, he sought to make people believe him more than man
(John 10:33). So much was he like his followers in outward appearance that the
kiss on the cheek was the only sure designation of him by the betrayer (Mark
14:44). On the other hand, he himself, unknown by man (Matthew 11:27), knew man
perfectly (John 2:24-25). For centuries men have been slowly acquiring the raw
material out of which may yet come a science of psychology. We are just learning
the printer of psychophysics. Because Jesus was alive with keen insight and
alert with penetrating sympathy, because he knew the mind of God in his
holiness, and at the same time felt all the sting and stain of sin in the mind
of man, Jesus knew man better than man has ever known himself, or ever will,
with all his anthropological sciences, except he learn from Christ Jesus the
secrets of knowledge which are born only of sympathy and Godly compassion.

II. JESUSEMBODIEDMAN.

It is as easy to toy with Jesus’ humanity as to trifle with his divinity.
Indeed, the "human view" of Jesus of Nazareth devitalizes the one and
emasculates the other. When we come behind the written record of his words and
deeds to the mind of him; only when we company in spirit with him from the
baptism to the last heart-crushed breath on the tree; only as we feel our way
along, heart to heart with him through his life on earth, only so do we discern
in him--not merely a man, even of superlative goodness and grace, not merely a
man among men, where we are weak, pure where we are defiled, and sinless where
we are sinful--but a comprehensive, universal man, one man who embodies in
himself what all men are, one who is our whole mankind in his individual person.
Except for the concrete embodiment of this ultimate truth in Jesus Christ, the
mind of man had never attained unto it.

III. JESUS ISCO-EQUAL WITHMAN.

Upon this fact, the co-equality of Jesus with man as with God, hinges the
possibility of each soul of man receiving reconciliation with God through Jesus
Christ (Romans 5:10-11). Were Jesus less than man or less than God, any
reconciliation effected by him would, of necessity, be partial, local and
temporary, and not complete, illocal, and eternal. The traditional theologies of
the church sought to construe God apart from Christ Jesus, and in the same way
to construe mankind apart from Jesus Christ. For this very reason, all
philosophies of the atonement have broken down with their own weight or been
broken through because of their insufficiency.

IV. JESUS IS THEONEREVEALER OFMAN.

Next to the quest for God, and, in reality, inseparable from it, is the abiding
and abounding hunger of the human heart to know the meaning of our human life
with all its varied experiences. What am I? What am I here for? Why must I
suffer this? Such queries vex the heart of man, and, turn where it will, the
quest of the soul is vain till it comes to the Christ. Here that which has been
hid is made plain. No oracular discussion or detailed instruction about man is
found in the Scriptures, but rather a perfect disclosure of the meaning and
purpose of human life is found lived out in utter fulness. Jesus exhibits no
discriminating sense of the "accidents" of births, of sex or race or religion or
economic condition. He knows no male or female, Barbarian Scythian, Jew or
Greek, rich or poor, bond or free. All alike are persons. To all despite squalor
and moral filth, the deference of love is due, disapproving love for the sinner,
to be sure, but love for every person. Nowhere else in all history of man in
time is there another revelation of the nature and purpose of human life,
comparable in kind to this one found in Jesus Christ. In one, life He exhibits
both man’s highest idea of God, and God’s ideal of every man.

Jesus as Related to Judaism. In human history, Jesus was a Jew, a child of the
Hebrew race, a son of Israel, an heir of the covenant "promise made to the
fathers." Throughout his life he observed perfectly the spirit of "the law that
was given by Moses." At the same time ruthlessly aside the accumulated
ceremonial exactions whereby the traditions of men had transformed the gifts of
God from a boon into a burden. In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew is
recorded the culmination of his withering rebuke of those who, through wilful
blindness, persistently go after even the right thing in the wrong way. He came
not to destroy the law (Matthew 5:17-19) by casting it away, but by filling it
to the full, showing that in him it had achieved its divine purpose. He exalts
life above the law, by living the life of God and man beyond the reach of law
(Romans 8:3-4). When they killed him, the exponents of the whole law, Israel as
a state, as a religion, and as a prescribed code, in the chosen representatives
of elders, chief priests and scribes (Mark 10:32-34), cut the last cord which
bound Jesus to the system of Judaism. Henceforth he is no Jew, but Saviour of
all who believe in his name.

’Tis a wondrous story, not briefly told, how Jesus "fulfilled the law;" how he
took to himself the hidden meaning of all the prophets from Moses on (Luke
24:25-27); how he took the law unto himself, and became himself the new law (2
Corinthians 5:14-15; Galatians 2:20); how he took all the sacrifices made under
the law unto himself, and became himself the one sufficient sacrifice for sin
and peace and gratitude (John 1:29; Hebrews 9:23-28); how he took the temple
itself into himself and became himself the one temple of meeting between God and
man (John 2:19-21); how he took all worship unto himself, and became himself, in
his compassionate help, the only acceptable worship of God by man (John
4:21-25). It is a story of breathless spiritual interest. Those who would read
other than the bare chapter headings of how it pleased God to sum up all things
in Christ (Ephesians 1:7-12), will find it writ large, for him who has eyes to
see, on every page of the Christian Scriptures.

Jesus as Related to the Church.

Jesus himself spoke little about the church. He spoke much about the kingdom.
But what Jesus personally did say concerning the church is significant; what he
said by the Spirit through the apostles is much more in quantity but not more
meaningful. For the whole nature and function and scope of the church can be
discovered from what Jesus was and said and did.

I. JESUS ASBUILDER OF THECHURCH. In language unmistakable Jesus declared that he
himself would build the church (Matthew 16:18). Yet, strangely enough, as men
think of buildings and the task of building, from the moment of that declared
purpose "began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem,
and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed, and the third day be raised up" (Matthew 16:21). Except for that last
clause we had been bewildered. For, clearly, the purpose to build the church
became more certain and deathless when Jesus "was raised on the third day" (1
Corinthians 15:4), and the nature of the church is made clear now that the
builder is Spirit as God is Spirit (John 4:24). Men may build up great creedal
statements, great ecclesiasticisms, great theologies, great disciplines and
great societies, but let no man forget that it is the purpose of the Christ who
dieth no more (Romans 8:10) to be the one Builder of his own church (Matthew
16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:5-9), and his church will be spiritual because he is
Spirit.

II. JESUS AS THEFOUNDATION OFHISCHURCH. For twenty centuries men have been
experimenting, building all sorts of churches on all sorts of foundations.
Practically everything has been well tried except for living men simply and
whole-heartedly to accept the living foundation of Jesus’ own choosing and let
the living builder build them in his own way into a spiritual temple, a living
organism. Other foundations have been laid and tried, Peter, philosophy,
propositions,--but all all in vain. Says Jesus, as he looks forward and sees
elders and chief priests and scribes and death--and the Father, "upon this rock
will I build." "This rock" is his deathless self. Lest any should stumble and
mistake the figure, by the mouth Of him whom the living Christ calls to be his
witness to the Gentiles, the Spirit of Jesus declares, "Other foundation can no
man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11).
Truly Jesus had no great need to speak many things concerning the church. This
is enough. From what Jesus did in the flesh we can know of a certainty what is
the process by which, as a living builder, he builds his church upon himself as
the living foundation.

It is conceivable and possible--speaking after the fashion of men--that Jesus
might have proceeded differently than he did in assembling the material and
providing for the building of his church on the earth. For instance, he might
have chosen--still speaking after the fashion of men--one Jew and one Gentile
and given them whatever preparation they lacked, and sent them to their separate
tasks. Or, he might--still humanly speaking--have chosen one man and one woman,
and with them have instituted one home as the nucleus of the church. But he did
not. Say not to yourself, it is foolish to set up such suggestions and surmises
as possible courses of divine procedure. For more than sixty generations men
have been trying out suggestions more foolish than these. What Jesus did do was
to call to company with himself men of every diversity of taste and tendency and
temper, and form them into a society where every love of greatness is swallowed
up in the greatness of love (Matthew 18:1-5), where his own mind is the sole
social bond and tie, and where loyalty to him is the sole condition of
fellowship in the society. Think you that the actual Christian religion will
ever be the ideal religion of Christ? Will men, sometime, come in child-likeness
of trust and confidence and belief and submit themselves to the divine process
of being builded by Christ into a perfect church?

Jesus Christ as Prophet. The thought-world of the human mind, how versatile it
is and varied, how full of eager quests and restless discontent, how daring and
audacious! What triumphs does the intellect achieve, now in a century of
philosophy and literature, now in a century of science and discovery! But when
all man’s mental best is measured by the side of the universe of mysteries and
mystery in which we are immersed, how less than little does it all appear! Yet
here, close by, is One who waits, asking only attention and stillness in the
soul, wishing to declare the mind of God and give the satisfying explanation of
the inquiries of mind and of the inquiring mind itself. Reason will find rest
only when it rests on "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians
1:24). Thus is he our sufficient Prophet.

Jesus Christ as Priest. The feeling-world of the human mind, how vast it is and
dominant! Our loves and hates, our hopes and terrors, our aspirations and
ambitions, our preferences and prejudices! How these all do sway our waking
moments and follow us sometimes even into sleep! So all-encompassing, indeed, do
these become that men are moved to say, What we do earnestly hope for, that we
are. Over against it all, we are so impotent to give expression to the surges of
the soul. When we would express to each other the depths within us, no art of
speech or contrivance made by man can scale the heights for us or sound the
depths. If we are so to each other, how then shall man declare his mind unto
God? Nay, who shall reach through all the earth and time and gather to himself
the groanings gleaned from near and far and declare unto God for us our
supplications and intercessions, our gratitude and praise? There is but one
Priest for man, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 6:17-20; Hebrews 9:11-22, Romans 8:26-27).

Jesus Christ as King. Who call describe it--that most subtle mystery which the
human mind enshrouds? Here in a world, a universe, we cannot apprehend, and
still less comprehend, man moves about and makes, moment by moment, his own
choices and decisions; he resolves on incentives and reacts on impulses; he
fashions and forms his purposes and cherishes or rejects his motives; he accuses
his own deceptiveness or approves his conscious rectitude. Such is the mystery
of self-control, such the wonder of conscious direction of effort to satisfy
desire, such is the miracle of the will to do, and the stubborn wont. What man
is he, and where, who has made his highest will to do only the will of the
living God (Romans 3:21-27)? Into this inscrutable inner chamber of the human
heart, into conscience and will, the Man, Christ Jesus, comes declaring his
kingship, and claiming his sovereign privilege to rule in all the might of love
and righteousness. No lesser King can rule in such a realm. The perfect,
universal Man, the perfect Son of the living God,--his is the Kingdom and
dominion. He is our King (Hebrews 2:17-18; Hebrews 4:14-15; Hebrews 7:25;
Hebrews 10:10-14).

Thus is it that Jesus Christ enters into the inmost being of the individuals
whom he draws unto himself, being lifted up, and by becoming in diverse and
divers men the one sufficient Prophet and Priest and King, he creates a kinship
in them and constitutes the new society, the living organism which exists only
to express his mind, his heart, his will. This living organism is the church of
Jesus Christ.

Christ Jesus the Reigning Head of the Church.

Speaking after the fashion of men, it is not at all strange that, though more
than sixty generations have passed from earth since Jesus was raised from the
dead, men have not yet seriously set to themselves the task of making "the
household of God," the family of like-minded "saints," "the holy temple" in
which each individual is "builded together" with all the others into a living
"habitation of God in the Spirit " (Ephesians 2:19-22). The natural world with
its political ideas and ideals, its economic conditions and situations, its
social forms and associations, presses upon us, colors our thinking, beclouds
our programs, obscures our insight, thwarts our occasional glimpses of spiritual
privilege and duty, and hides from us our true selves, our Scriptures and our
Christ. In a vague and theoretical way we recognize the pre-eminence and power
of the glorified Redeemer, but he has seemed so far removed from our daily world
of grind and obligation. We "are yet carnal" (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). But, Christ
helping us, we are throwing off the grave clothes of our burial in spiritual
darkness. We begin to know, in all lands of earth, that the headship of the
living Christ is no mere phrase on the lip, but a miracle-working energy in
man’s daily life; that "in the church and in Christ Jesus is the glory of God
unto all generations" (Ephesians 3:21); that "through the church is made known
the manifold wisdom of God, unto the principalities and powers in the
heavenlies" (Ephesians 3:10); that every continent and every nation and every
tongue is the purchased possession of him who, "with his own precious blood"
(Acts 20:28); secured the church unto himself.

Christ Jesus the Life of the Church.

It has seemed unto us as a parable, a figure of speech, a metaphor, and no
literal and actual reality, that the church is the body of Christ, the only body
he has on the earth, the living organism chosen by the wisdom of God to express
the embodied mind of Christ to men, and to be the living agency of communication
between the human universe and the spiritual God. We have read the words often
enough and seriously enough, but our eyes have been holden and our understanding
has been dead. It may be that our false sciences, our mechanical physics and our
dead psychologies have tended to deepen our darkness. At all events, since we
have come to realize that the soul is the life of the body; that the whole soul
makes the whole body alive; that the body is a living organism only by reason of
its union with soul; that soul is tangible in this world only by reason of its
union with a body; that the soul without body is, at least, no concrete factor
in the life we live in the flesh--since we have come to weave together into a
definite science these simple commonplaces of familiar observation, the reality
of the relation between Christ and his church is become a more significant
reality.

Read again the words: "to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that
filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23); "unto the building up of the body of
Christ" (Ephesians 4:12); "even so ought husbands also to love their own wives
as their own bodies--even as Christ also the church; because we are members of
his body" (Ephesians 5:28-30); "and he is the head of the body, the church--that
in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Colossians 1:18); "and not
holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together
through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God" (Colossians
2:19); "I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head
of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:3);
"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body
being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one spirit were we all
baptized into one body--and were all made to drink of one spirit. And whether
one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored,
all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members each
in his part" (1 Corinthians 12:12-13; 1 Corinthians 12:26-27). In sharp contrast
with these truths of infinite spiritual import, the past and current history of
the church, of the churches, and of Christians in the church, can be
contemplated only with a moral shudder and a great cry of heart to God for pity
and forgiving mercy.

Christ Jesus the Judge. The judicial function Of Messiah was not found in the
ancient oracles. By so much does the "promise" made to Israel outrun the
prophetic anticipations of the Jewish faith which Jesus Christ fulfilled. Both
in person and in the apostles by the Spirit does the Lord of Life claim the
privilege of final discernment and determination over all the race. He came to
redeem. Because of his Sonship of God and man, Jesus takes to himself this
function. In one recorded conversation is contained the most stupendous and
momentous self-revelation ever made in human hearing (John 5:17; John 5:19-47).
This passage in the gospel by John is all inexhaustible wealth of spiritual
disclosure. Any attempt at an exposition of it here is impossible. In verses
22-30, Jesus shows both divine and the human reasons why he alone is competent,
qualified, adequate and appointed, not only to exercise the executive functions
of divineness through the church in the world and be, himself, the law of life
in the church for the world, but also to be, as Son of God and son of man, the
final arbiter of character and destiny. In another portion of the Scriptures is
a relation which no unaided and unguided human hand could pen. The resurrection
of Jesus Christ is the pivotal of the religion of Christ in human history. It is
a bewildering fact for science and philosophy and the rock of Christian faith.
Basing the revelation upon this changeless and unchangeable reality, Paul
unfolds the final end of life and time. When the last enemy is abolished for the
last man, and the Victim of men is become the Victor of man, "when all things
have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to
him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all" (1
Corinthians 15:20-28). When the mind of man pauses and confronts the mind of God
in Christ, when the eternal tragedy of the Cross in the middle of time is
realized even faintly, when the student of history and lover of his fellowmen
and Christ contemplates the love of Christ for man and the urgency of Christ
Jesus in the history of man, the lifted hand falls nerveless, the head droops in
contrition too deep to be felt, and the heart cries, Even so, come, Lord Jesus"!
The voice replies: "Go, teach all the nations; baptizing them into the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to do all things
whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the
consummation of the age."


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  CHAPTER 5: DH - 05-THE CHURCH 01 � THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH
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THE CHURCH I. THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH

A. C. SMITHER The most matchless wonder in human history was the Incarnation.
Surpassing all things else in human experience in importance was this
transcendent event. In the person of Christ "The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
Father), full of grace and truth." In him God was manifest in the flesh. As the
forces of this vast and stupendous universe declare the glory of God, his
creative energy, his omnipotence, his omniscience; so in the face of Jesus
Christ is portrayed the personal character of Almighty God. Here are mirrored
Divine love, Divine forgiveness, Divine fatherhood. In the universal language of
our flesh and our nature are spelled out for our illumination and our comfort
the true heart and character of the great Father-Spirit of the Universe.

Here, too, in the person of the matchless Nazarene is presented to us the ideal
man, the utmost reach of human nature as it yearns for him who made us in his
own likeness. In him man has reached the fulness, the richness, the splendor of
his powers. As on the bosom of yon black storm-cloud rests the rainbow in its
sevenfold gorgeous splendor--that strange child of sunshine and mist--so on the
dark background of sinful humanity shines the radiant rainbow of Divine
character, magnificent in its beauty and colorings. Jesus was the perfect
embodiment of his Father’s will. In not one single instance of his life was
there an infraction of his Divine law. He struck no discordant note in the
eternal symphonies of the universe. His soul-searching prayer was, "Thy will be
done." In the very nature of our fragile humanity this vision of Divine beauty
must be evanescent. Like that child of mystery, the flashing cornet in its
flaming glory that sweeps athwart the horizon, filling our hearts with wonder
and amazement, and is as soon gone as it came, so came Jesus into human vision,
filling our hearts with wonder and worship only to pass again into the source
whence he came. It is no marvel that his disciples stood gazing into the upper
deep, whither he had disappeared from their adoring eyes. A Church Prepared.
That man should come into possession of the blessings of this visitation, that
this incarnation should be continued in human hearts, the church of Jesus Christ
was born into the world. As Jesus was begotten in the bosom of the Virgin Mary
by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born in the habitation of lowliness and
humility with the beasts in the stall, while angels swept their harps with
heavenly music on the starlit hills of Judea, where wandering shepherds kept
watch over their flocks by night; so on Pentecost, amid the throngs of Jews who
had gathered into Jerusalem from every country whither providence had led their
wandering feet, the church of Christ, begotten by the Holy Spirit, was born amid
the wonder and acclamations of men and angels. And as the frail body of the
Christ-child was woven in the mysterious loom of life as a habitation for the
Divine Spirit, and as his body grew in stature that it might be the organ on
which the Divine Father could play heavenly strains in human ears, and as this
body was the instrument by which Jesus was to perform his wonderful works, and
through which he was to bring his matchless message to men; so was fashioned by
the same Spirit another body that was to be the habitation of the same Spirit
and by which the regeneration of man and the salvation of the race were to be
brought about. And as high and holy as were the character and service of the
Master of men, so ideal was the standard of conduct and character in and through
the church of Christ. The Unity of the Church. As there was one body,
all-sufficient for the Divine indwelling and work, so there was organized the
one church, which was designed to be all-sufficient for the world’s
evangelization, which was the task assigned this new aspirant for serving the
race in the widest possible manner. During his life, and long before the church
had a beginning, Jesus was greatly desirous that its unity should be preserved
that it might bring all men to believe that he was the Son of God and Saviour of
the world.

Directly bearing upon this unity, hear the words of Jesus in that wonderful
intercessory prayer, John 17:20-21 : "Neither for these only do I pray, but for
them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that
the world may believe that thou didst send me."

You will observe that the burden upon the heart of our Lord in this petition was
that, because of the unity of his followers, the world would believe that he was
sent of God. The succeeding ages have proved all too well that the greatest
hindrance to the conversion of the world is the unfortunate divisions among the
followers of our Christ. The great apostle to the Gentiles recognized this
unity, which in his mind rested upon a sevenfold unity. Hear his words as
recorded in Ephesians 4:4 : "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye
were 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." This unity
of the church he further confirms in this language in 1 Corinthians 12:12 : "For
as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being
many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized
into one body." Language expressive of the unity of the Apostolic Church could
not be stronger. Not only was this oneness of the church everywhere recognized,
and taught and practiced, but the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 1:10-13 says,
in stern rebuke of a tendency toward division in the Church: "I beseech you,
brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same
thing, and that there be no division among you; but that ye be perfected
together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been signified
unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe,
that there are contentions among you. No, this I mean, that each one of you
saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos: and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is
Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name
of Paul?"

Again Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 3:3-6 : "Ye are yet carnal; for whereas there
is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and do ye not walk after the
manner of men? For when one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos,
are ye not men? What then is Apollos’, and what is Paul? Ministers through whom
ye believed; and each as the Lord gave to him. I planted; Apollos watered; but
God gave the increase." Upon no one doctrine are the Scriptures clearer and more
explicit than that Jesus Christ organized through his followers the one church,
and meant that his work should be done through it. It is equally evident that
this essential oneness of the church has long since been lost, and cannot be
recovered until we return to the original unity of Christ’s body. The Church’s
Relation to Jesus. The chief significance of the church arises from its relation
to Jesus Christ. It is his earthly body, the organ through which his life finds
expression and operation in the world. The church rests upon the Christ as its
foundation. Long before its beginning Jesus said to Peter, who had confessed
that Jesus was the Son of God: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build
my church." This rock meant, unquestionably, the great truth that Peter had
confessed, namely, that Jesus was the Son of God. Till this great and
fundamental truth was evident, from all the words and works of Jesus, and was
finally confirmed by his resurrection from the dead, the church was never
established. Upon this sublime truth that Jesus was the Son of God, the Church
was divinely founded. This fact gives it stability, dignity, power. Resting upon
such a foundation, the gates of Hades will never overthrow it. Any organization
claiming to be a church, and denying the Sonship of Jesus, by that very fact
unchurches itself and ignores the true nature and character of the great Head of
the church. This Church has Jesus as its supreme authority. It was he who said,
with surpassing, dignity, "All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me."
These are the words of one having Divine power or are the ravings of a fool.
Where Jesus has clearly spoken it is becoming in us to keep silent, and to give
earnest heed to the Divine message. Where he is silent we may venture to express
an opinion. These words of the Master are recorded upon the pages of the Holy
Scriptures. Herein men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, and he who
would find the words of the great Teacher must faithfully con these sacred
pages; for, properly understood and interpreted, this book is the ultimate
expression of the authority of Jesus.

"The personality of Jesus is the chief attraction and power in the church, and
especially is he the charm in the public presentation of the gospel of Christ.
Most of the great doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the incarnation,
the thought of God’s dwelling on earth, the making of expiatory offerings to
placate a supposedly offended deity, were in the world before the coming of
Christ. When these great truths became incarnated in him, when the Divine power
and beauty found expression on human lips, when God became manifest in human
flesh--when these facts are preached, then men’s hearts are stirred and they
soon become obedient to the faith. "Christ and him crucified" constitute the
Divine evangel. Were Christianity, even with its great doctrines, shorn of the
personality of Jesus, it would be as lifeless as some of the other great
religious systems of the World.

Jesus is the great central luminary of the church, out from whom go the radiant
light and power of God as the rays of the sun reach out to bless the whole
planetary system. And as the planets move round the sun as their common center,
and are held in their orbits by the invisible laws of gravitation, each one
"forever singing as they shine, the hand that made its is Divine," so all the
apostles and powers in the church move round the Christ and reflect his glory
and are obedient to the invisible force of spiritual gravitation.

Baptism in the Church. The ordinances of the church have their power and
significance only as they are related to him. No adequate interpretation can be
given to Christian baptism except in its relation to Jesus Christ. It was
imposed upon the church by his authority, and was to be administered in his
name. Baptism is a spiritual act on the part of the obedient believer; for in
one Spirit, in obedience to the requirement and teaching of the one Spirit, are
penitent believers baptized into one body, the church. Baptism is a symbolic
act; for Paul says (Romans 6:2-5): "We who died to sin, how shall we any longer
live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism
into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of
the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become
united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness
of his resurrection." A more beautiful symbolism than that of our death to sin,
our burial with Christ in baptism and our rising to walk with him in newness of
life could not be conceived.

It is surely worthy of its Divine origin. Baptism is a transitional act.
According to Paul, baptism is the transitional act by which we are brought into
Christ. Paul declares that we are baptized into Christ (Romans 6:3); that we are
baptized into his death (Romans 6:3), and also that we are baptized into his
body (1 Corinthians 12:13). Surely the whole beauty and significance of this
ordinance center upon Jesus Christ. The Lord’s Supper in the Church. The same
statement may be made with reference to the Lord’s Supper. This ordinance has a
fourfold significance: It is a memorial, "This do in remembrance of me;" it is a
communion, "Is it not a communion of the blood of Christ?" It is a sacrifice,
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto the
remission of sins;" it is a type, "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink
the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come." It will thus be seen that
the whole institution centers about the Master. From the spirit of this
ordinance and from the example of the apostolic church (Acts 20:7), many
believers meet upon the first day of the week to observe this Divine ordinance.
The Lord’s Day in the Church. The Lord’s Day stands in about the same relation
to Jesus, as we hold a weekly observance in memory of the resurrection of our
Lord. The New Testament Church never observed the Jewish Sabbath as a day of
worship. From the very beginning of the church the disciples kept the Lord’s
Day, thus honoring the Christ (John 20:19; John 20:26; Acts 2:1; Acts 20:7, 1
Corinthians 16:2).

Separate these two ordinances and the Lord’s Day from their relation to Jesus,
and they have no meaning. Properly relate them to the Master and they are
profoundly meaningful institutions. The Holy Spirit in the Church. As I have
already said, the church was begotten in the world by the Holy Spirit. This was
in accord with the promise of Jesus to His disciples, to whom he gave this
promise: "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the
Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will Send him [Into you. And
he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of
righteousness and of judgment.--I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall
guide you into all truth" (John 16:7-12). Following this promise, the Lord said
to his disciples, just previous to his ascension: "But ye shall receive power
when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the
earth" (Acts 1:8).

It was following upon this promise that the apostles and other disciples were
gathered in one place, and there came upon them the fulfillment of the promise
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, who enabled them to speak with
tongues which they had never learned, and to have that understanding of the true
nature of Jesus which empowered them to preach him as the world’s Redeemer and
Saviour. Thus was the church of Christ divinely begotten, and thus began the
reign of the Holy Spirit in the church which he holds to-day. Through the
preaching of Spirit-guided men the church was established in Jerusalem and
carried to the uttermost part of the earth.

Much emphasis in this church was laid upon the Holy Spirit in his work upon the
hearts and lives of the followers of the lowly Nazarene. The New Testament
Scriptures were not yet written, and they were dependent upon the Holy Spirit
for their guidance in all their teaching and work. Great recognition was given
the Divine Spirit by all the New Testament writers. The presence and power of
the Holy Spirit were recognized all through the Acts of Apostles and the other
New Testament Scriptures. The Holy Spirit was not only a factor in man’s
regeneration, but was present and was a power in man’s sanctification. Paul
declares that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit.

Everywhere in the New Testament Scriptures there is abundant recognition of the
fact that Christianity is a spiritual religion, and that a man’s religion that
is not begun and carried on by the Spirit of the living God has little value. As
life always finds habitation and expression, whether in the vegetable or animal
kingdom, so the Holy Spirit, in the mysteries of his own being, works out for
himself an abiding place in and through the spiritual nature of man.

Missions in the Church. The supreme purpose for which the church was organized
was that it might embody the Christ in the world and become the means of
carrying on his personal ministry among men on earth. That this was designed to
reach all men must be true in the very nature of Christ’s life and ministry.
This vision found expression in the last recorded words of our Lord when he
commanded his apostles to "make disciples of all nations," to preach the good
tidings of redeeming love to every creature that was made in the Divine image.
Jesus had told his disciples that they were to be his witnesses to the uttermost
part of the earth. The organization of the church was among the Jewish people.
The first missionary work of the church was among this nation. Indeed, one of
the sore problems of the early church was to convince the Jews that Christianity
was designed for other nations as well as for themselves. They thought
themselves the chosen people, and that they had a monopoly on God and his love.
The church did not have its widest vision till the apostle Paul was called as
God’s chosen vessel to bear his name before kings and the Gentiles. Under the
inspiration and leadership of this magnificent spirit the church began to get a
new vision of its open doors and fields of duty. Soon the church saw the man of
Macedonia, and, following in the footsteps of the westering sun and under the
strategic statesmanship of the apostle to the Gentile world, the church was soon
established in such centers as Ephesus, Corinth, and even in the seven-hilled
city beside the yellow Tiber.

Zeal in the Church.

One is impressed in the study of the early church, as its life is set forth by
the inspired writers, with the prominent place of earnestness, the
prayerfulness, the spirit of service and sacrifice that characterized these
early followers of our Lord. Luke says of the Jerusalem Church that "they
continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking
of bread and the prayers . . . And all that believed were together, and had all
things common; . . . and day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in
the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and
singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people" (Acts
2:42-47).

Prayer had a deservedly high place in their lives and work. They waited much
upon the Lord for help and guidance, justly recognizing their dependence upon
Divine mercy. Indeed, the church had its beginning in a prayer meeting, and has
always advanced in the world upon its knees.

It must not be overlooked in this study that this young church was called to
battle with some of the greatest vices of antiquity and that, growing out of
this condition of society, the church had many perplexing problems with which to
deal that sorely tried the wisdom and patience of that inexperienced
organization.

Stewardship in the Church. In that period of the church the followers of the
Master sold their possessions and brought them to a common treasury, and they
were distributed to each one as there was need. I presume this was the beginning
of Christian socialism. Whatever may have been their crudities in interpreting
their relation to their property, they rightly perceived that their possessions
were not their own; that they were merely stewards, administrators, and held
their property subject to the need and call of the church. Could this same
principle be accepted and utilized to-day, the power of the church would be
greatly augmented.

Another characteristic of those early Christians was their gladness of spirit.
They were ever filled with the sunshine of life and rejoiced that they were
counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ in some of the great
persecutions that came upon the early church; for we must ever remember that the
New Testament Church, like its Lord, was "made perfect through suffering." In
all these great persecutions that burned the dross out of the Early Church, the
disciples gladly went to the stake and the cross, witnessing by their death
their fealty to their Lord.

Church Organization.

Such a study as this would be incomplete without some reference to the
organization of the Apostolic Church, and yet this subject must be approached
with great hesitancy; for scholars, great and numerous, have traveled this road
and it is to be feared have not removed all the difficulties. The four
interpretations of church government as given by ecclesiastical scholars are
those of the papacy, the episcopacy, the presbytery and independency. Each of
these interpretations has mighty and doughty advocates. It seems that far too
much emphasis has been laid upon this secondary thing in our most holy faith;
for it is much to be doubted if the New Testament teaches any form of church
organization. If it does, its teaching is so indefinite that great scholars have
widely differed as to what this teaching is. The church is an organism rather
than an organization, and like political or civil organizations, God leaves it
to adjust itself to its environment and to adapt itself to the age and
generation which it serves.

Life always builds for itself a habitation suited to its need, and life, which
is but another name for God, can surely devise means for its operation and
expression in spiritual realms. With this method the church could flourish alike
in the theocracy of the Jews or the democracy of the Romans, for it is far
deeper than its external form or feature. It deals with the fundamentals of life
and spiritual culture and like the fulness of the ocean’s tide, fits itself to
the contour and condition of every country and civilization. It is free to
choose that which is best fitted to the sphere in which it is to labor. Give the
church freedom in her forms of government as God has given the nations freedom
to adjust their organization to their national task and need.

Officers in the Church.

While there is no clearly defined form of church organization set forth in the
word of God, there appears to have been five orders or classes of workers in the
primitive Church; two of these may be termed extraordinary in their functions
and three as ordinary in their lines of service. The Extraordinary Officers in
the New Testament Church.

There were two classes of officers peculiar to the apostolic church: apostles
and prophets. Besides Paul there were twelve apostles who had been personally
trained by our Lord and when endowed and directed by the Holy Spirit they
planted the church in the world (Matthew 10:1-8; Luke 21:16; Acts 1:5). They
appear to have possessed miraculous powers which were doubtless needed in their
great task. They had no Successors in office. The prophets of the original
church seem to have been Divinely aided in teaching the truth (Acts 15:32;
Ephesians 2:20; Ephesians 4:11). They were apparently raised up to provide
infallible teachers until the New Testament scriptures should be written. Like
the apostles, they had no successors in office. The Ordinary Officers of the
Church.

There was a class of workers in the primitive church called evangelists (Acts
21:8; Ephesians 4:11; 2 Timothy 4:5). Their work appears to have been identical
with that of the modern evangelists with the addition that they appear to have
often set disorganized and feeble churches in order. They do not appear to have
been related to the local church in any official way.

There was an order in the ministry of these churches known as elders, bishops or
shepherds (Acts 20:17; 1 Timothy 3:1-7; Php 1:1; Ephesians 4:11-13). Their work
appears to have been identical with that of the modern pastor. They were to feed
the flock of God to which they were called (Acts 20:17). They were to exercise a
shepherd’s pastoral care over it. Apparently no other provision was made for the
spiritual instruction of the local church. The statement is not given that they
were supported while engaged in their sacred ministries, though this may be
legitimately inferred from several passages of Scripture, notably 1 Timothy
5:17-18. Another order in the New Testament Church was called deacons (Acts
6:1-7; Php 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:7-12). The function of this order is neither defined
in the word "deacon," which is a generic term meaning "servant," nor in the work
to be done. This indetermination of the New Testament teaching on the function
of the deacon has led to a great variety of interpretation as to the true work
of this office of the primitive church.

Summary.

We have thus seen that the church is a Divine institution, ordained of God as
the means by which the life and work of Christ may be perpetuated in the world;
that in the beginning there was but the one body, striving to do the work of the
great Head of the church, a unity prayed for by our Lord himself and practiced
by his apostles; that the relation of Jesus to this church was most intimate and
endearing, that this church was filled and directed by the Holy Spirit, and that
it was the earthly habitation of the third person of the Trinity; that it was
the great missionary agency by which the whole world is eventually to be won to
our Lord and Master; that the early disciples were filled with great zeal and
enthusiasm, and surrendered their powers and possessions for its propagation in
the earth; and finally, that in all probability very wide latitude was granted
the early church in the matter of organization and methods of work. Such, in my
mind, were the characteristics of the New Testament Church.


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  CHAPTER 6: DH - 06-THE PLACE OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM
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THE CHURCH II. THE PLACE OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM FREDERICK D. KERSHNER

I. ORDINANCE. As the body needs its skeleton, the organized government its
constitution, and the discourse, whether written or spoken, its outline or plan,
so the church demands some simple frame-work to serve as the definite means for
Hie extension and propagation of vital Christianity. This frame-work is largely
embodied in the idea of ordinance. The ordinances of the church may therefore be
said to makeup its formal constitution. The simplicity of this Constitution is
very apparent when we observe that it includes only two features. The one is the
initiatory rite known as baptism; the other, the perpetual sacrament known as
the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist. The one marks off in a definite, external,
and specific way the entrance of the believer into the Christian communion; the
other keeps constantly, from the day of that entrance down to the day of death,
the great central facts of his religion before the mind of the Christian.

There is the strongest psychological reason for the existence of such an
ordinance as baptism, aside from its place in the constitution of the church.
When an individual is convinced of the truthfulness of Christ’s message, when he
earnestly repents of his past sinful life, when the internal change of will
which is the first and fundamental factor in his conversion has taken place,
then a trite psychology demands that his feelings and belief should find some
definite form of external expression. This form should be explicit, solemn, and
of such a character as to be impressive, and yet simple enough to admit of wide
adaptation. It should possess an easily understood meaning, but one of deep
significance as well. In short, it should be psychologically just what it
actually is in the objective frame-work of the church.

If we understand baptism as the initiatory ordinance of Christianity, and that
obedience to the ordinance is therefore necessary before becoming at least in
the fullest formal sense a Christian, we understand readily enough the
significance attached to it throughout the New Testament narratives. Practically
everywhere, baptism is linked with conversion, and nowhere in the sacred books
is there even a hint that anyone claiming to be a Christian was not baptized.
Philip had no hesitancy in baptizing the eunuch immediately upon his profession
of faith in Christ; Paul baptized the Philippian jailor the same hour of the
night; Peter insisted upon prompt baptism for the three thousand who were
converted on the day of Pentecost; and Paul, despite his miraculous conversion,
was baptized, as soon as he regained his sight, by Ananias of Damascus. The idea
that baptism does not constitute as essential step in entrance upon Christian
fellowship finds no comfort in the pages of revelation. To those who adhere to
what may be styled distinctively mechanical theology, the ordinance occupies a
still more important place. Coupled with the remission of sins on the day of
Pentecost and elsewhere, it becomes a manifest condition of salvation. Often, on
this account, baptism, is esteemed more significant than even the possession of
the Christian virtues and graces. To be baptized becomes the sine qua non of
salvation; and having been baptized, too often there is little else apparently
which demands attention. The danger of such a legalistic view-point requires
little emphasis or explanation. Baptism, however indispensable as condition of
formal admission to the church of Christ, carries with it no such miraculous
power as will perform the impossible transmutation of an external rite into an
element of Christian character. The obedience which prompted submission to the
ordinance is indeed an element in character development and must receive full
value as such; but no religious rite possesses significance, save as a means to
an end independent of itself. To be a Christian in the full and complete sense
of the term, one must be baptized; but one may easily be baptized, at least in
the formal sense, and never be a Christian. The place of baptism as the
initiatory ordinance of the church becomes therefore exceedingly simple and easy
to understand. The last step in conversion, the expression in action of the
volitional acceptance of the Christ, the symbol of an earnest and honest
stepping across from an old life to a new life, the seal of a sincere
determination to embody the Christ ideals from day to day, its value and
position are at once apparent. No Christian can afford to slur or slight such an
ordinance, any more than he can afford to make of it more than it claims of
itself to be. There is no conceivable reason, short of physical impossibility,
which a man claiming to be a Christian can give for not being baptized. To
refuse obedience to a law and at the same time pretend to respect and serve the
law-giver is contradictory and absurd. That baptism is not everything in the
Christian religion is no more true than the fact that it possesses a value and
significance which demand consideration and respect. The necessity and value of
baptism as an ordinance lead to a further consideration of its symbolic
character. It is certainly conceivable that an ordinance, as such, does not
demand the symbolic feature; but it is manifest that such a feature adds greatly
to the significance and impressiveness of the ordinance. Granted the value of
the symbolic reference, granted also the possibility of easily securing it, and
its presence would seem to be almost infallibly predicated. In other words,
while the Founder of the Christian religion might have selected any form of
obedience to serve as the overt and initiatory rite admitting men to his church,
it is none the less true that the rite which would most impressively symbolize
the central fact or facts in his system would be the rite which we should expect
him to choose. Blind obedience is good, as far as it goes; but a reasoned
obedience brings forth far more of the richest treasures of the soul and is
better. The religion of Jesus Christ is fundamentally and always a reasonable
religion. That it transcends human reason may well be admitted, but at no point
does transcendence ever involve contradiction, and nowhere is that
reasonableness better illustrated than in the symbolic features of the Christian
ordinances.

II. SYMBOLISM. From what has been written already, the manifest probability of a
symbolical character attaching to the ordinance of baptism is, we take it,
sufficiently clear. It seems proper that at this point our appeal Should be made
directly to the Scriptures themselves, in order that they may sustain or
disprove the antecedent probability of the symbolism indicated. The inquiry may
be, in all fairness, limited to the New Testament. This is not to infer that
prophetic evidence of value may not he found in the Old; but inasmuch as the New
contains the only full and detailed account of the Christian religion, any
impression produced by a careful study of the evidence which is therein
presented could only be confirmed by the Old. That it should be contradicted by
the latter is a manifest impossibility; for were such a thing involved in the
study, its only effect would be to discredit all testimony upon the subject.
There exists no necessity therefore for our pursuing our inquiry beyond the
limits of the New Testament.

Perhaps the most significant symbolic reference to baptism in the Scriptures is
that contained in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. The passage in
full, reads as follows:

"Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death?

"We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as
Christ was raised from the dead through the glory the Father, so we also might
walk in newness of life.

"For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be
also in the likeness of his resurrection."

Obviously the symbolism of the initiatory rite of Christianity is very fully and
beautifully expressed in these words. In the fifteenth chapter of the First
Epistle to the Corinthians the great Apostle to the Gentiles characterizes the
Gospel briefly as the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
If then the central facts in the Gospel are death, burial and resurrection; and
if these are all expressed in the act of baptism, as the Epistle to the Romans
declares, no more fitting or beautiful symbolism could be imagined. Baptism thus
becomes in its very action a profession of faith in the great central facts of
the religion which it represents. It is noticeable, moreover, that there is
another feature contained in the passage quoted above which is worthy of careful
attention. Not only does baptism fittingly symbolize the death, the burial, and
the resurrection of the Christ himself, but it likewise symbolizes the essential
experience which every convert must pass through in order to become a Christian.
Fundamentally this experience means a death to the old life of sin, and a
resurrection to the new life of righteousness, of freedom, and of service in the
glorious sunlight of the Christ. Evidently the apostle had this in mind, when he
spoke of walking "in newness of life," while the argument of the context is
largely if not entirely, based upon the same idea. We have buried the old life,
is the thought, and have arisen to walk in the new.

There is still another, perhaps more remote but none the less beautiful
symbolism suggested in the Scripture quoted above, which appeals with peculiar
power to every human being. There must come a time in the experience of all when
the Valley of the Shadow is reached and when earthly life is no more. In the
presence of that hour, how consoling, the reflection that in the solemn rite of
baptism there was symbolized for us not only that death and burial which we
share with the Christ, but likewise that glorious resurrection which is his
gift, to us and to all who follow him.

Whether, therefore, we consider the matter from what we may style the religious,
the ethical, or the personal point of view, the symbolism of the ordinance
remains equally beautiful and impressive. No man who understands the
significance of this symbolism can be other than solemn in its presence. No
ceremony in the world is quite so impressive as a true baptism. How much it
means, how simple it all is, and yet how profound! The Divine wisdom is
assuredly manifest in the establishment of such an ordinance. In the Epistle to
the Colossians there is a similar symbolic reference. The passage referred to is
found in the second chapter and from the eleventh to the thirteenth verses
inclusive:

"In whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in
the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;

"Having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him
through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

"And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, you, I say, did he make alive together with him, having forgiven us all
our trespasses."

Very clearly here the symbolical character of the ordinance is manifest. Again
we are "buried with him," and again we are "risen with him." Death, burial,
resurrection--without these there is no Christian religion, and these are all
embodied in the ordinance of baptism. In the third chapter of the Gospel of
John, in the famous conversation with Nicodemus dealing with the subject of the
new birth, the language is used with which we are all so familiar: "Except one
be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." There
seems to be very little doubt that these words refer to baptism. Perhaps the
emphasis is intended to he placed on the spiritual rather than the formal
element in the terms of admission to the new kingdom; but the symbolism is still
one of a birth to a new life, and a death to an old one. To be born of water and
of the spirit, as in the Epistle to the Romans, is to rise from the baptismal
grave to walk henceforth in newness of life.

It would seem that the passages quoted above should be sufficient to indicate
the expressive symbolism of the initiatory ordinance of the church of Christ.
That which we have been led to expect from a psychological point of view, we
find the scriptural writers asserting from the point of view of fact. Could Paul
have been mistaken when he referred to the ordinance as he did? And even though
it may be possible, as it is possible no matter how plain a passage may be, to
so interpret these significant words of Romans and Colossians as to change their
apparently obvious meaning in order to advance a particular theological theory,
is it well that such a thing should be done? It is significant that the great
majority of commentators upon these passages find it impossible to make such a
change. To merely recite the names of those who belong to this class would be
tedious. The list includes among others, Grotius, Beza, Bloomfield, Koppe,
Rosemuller, Calvin, Locke, Barnes, Wesley, Whitefield, Whitby, Macknight, and
Chalmers. The language of the last named is typical of all the rest:

"The original meaning of the word baptism is immersion; and, though we regard it
as a point of indifferency, whether the ordinance so named be performed in this
way or by sprinkling, yet we doubt not that the prevalent style of the
administration in the Apostle’s days was by an actual submerging of the whole
body under water. We advert to this for the purpose of throwing light on the
analogy that is instituted in these verses. Jesus Christ, by death, underwent
this sort of baptism by an immersion under the surface of the ground, whence he
soon emerged again by his resurrection. We, by being baptized into his death,
are conceived to have made a similar translation. In the act of descending under
the water of baptism, to have resigned an old life, and in the act of ascending
to emerge into a second or new life--along the course of which it is our part to
maintain a strenuous avoidance of that sin which as good as expunged the being
we had formerly; and a strenuous prosecution of that holiness which should begin
with the first moment that we were ushered into our present being, and be
perpetuated and made progress toward the perfection of full and ripened
immortality."--Lectures on the Epistles to the Romans, chapter VI:4. The
symbolical character of the ordinance of baptism is therefore indicated at least
with sufficient clearness to establish a presumption from the New Testament. The
authorities already quoted would seem to demand this much consideration. It is
readily and gladly conceded that further investigation may invalidate or destroy
the presumption referred to, but for the present it is surely fair to at least
concede the presumption. More than this we do not ask at the present juncture.

III. THETESTIMONY OFLANGUAGE. From what has been written, it will be observed
that the symbolism of the New Testament interprets the ordinance of baptism in a
very specific and definite way. Embodying the great central facts of the
Christian religion, the death, burial, and resurrection of its Founder, pointing
directly toward the moral and ethical change in the individual which is
characteristic of every true conversion, and casting a halo of hope and light
over the tomb which yawns before each Christian, no further explanation would
seem to be required. In the absence of contradictory testimony, surely the
presumption afforded by the symbolic evidence as to the character of baptism
should be of the highest significance. It must be conceded, however, that in the
presence of contradictory material, the strongest presumptive argument becomes
almost if not entirely valueless. It is, therefore, right and proper to inquire
if there is any contradictory evidence to disprove the presumption afforded by
the passages already quoted from the Epistles to the Colossians and the Romans,
and by the symbolic view of the ordinance, throughout.

First perhaps among such possible evidence would be that drawn from the direct
meaning of the term itself. Baptism, as is well known, is a word transferred
almost bodily from another language and it is therefore exceedingly important
that its significance in the language from which it has been transferred should
be fully understood. It is not the purpose of the writer to give all elaborate
resume of the meaning of the Greek baptizw, or of any of its derivatives. With
the presumption already established by the symbolical argument, all that we care
to discover is whether there is anything in the original meaning of the word
which will seriously dissipate that presumption. This much would seem to be no
especially difficult task to accomplish. The root meaning of baptizw is almost
universally conceded to be the idea involved in submerging or plunging. If there
is any reputable Greek lexicon which takes an opposite position, we have yet to
be informed of its existence. There are lexicons which give as secondary or
derivative meanings, to wash, to cleanse, and the like; but these meanings are
at no times incompatible with the idea of submersion. The word is found quite
frequently in ancient writers outside of the New Testament, such as Lucian,
Plutarch, Strabo, Polybius, and Epictetus. In all cases where it is found the
meaning is either to submerge, or, at the farthest, something which does not in
the slightest measure contradict the idea of submerge. Occasionally baptizw and
kindred words may be rendered to wash, to dye, or to cleanse; but as washing,
dyeing, and cleansing may all be performed by submersion, and in fact usually
are so, there is nothing which precludes the meaning indicated.

It may be said, however, that the classical use and the New Testament use of the
word are two different things, and that no valid argument may therefore be drawn
from the former as applying to the latter. Were this true, and it is admitted
that it may be true, still the burden of proof that the meaning in the New
Testament is really different from the meaning in classical Greek would seem to
be with those making the assertion. No proof to this effect has so far been
produced. On the contrary the word as used in the New Testament is perfectly in
harmony with its context when rendered submerge, and at no time does the meaning
appears strained or forced. The word baptism, or in the original baptisma,
occurs twenty-two times in the New Testament. The other related words occur a
little over one hundred times. In no case will it do violence to the context to
interpret the word given in the text with the idea involved in submerge or
immerse.

It would not only be tedious but the writer deems altogether profitless to
present any elaborate analysis of passages proving the facts just stated. Such
tabulations have been prepared frequently and may be easily worked out by anyone
possessing a New Testament, either in the English or the Greek. As already
stated, so far as we know, there is practically no denial of the root or primary
meaning of the word. The problem with us at this point, it should be remembered,
is not whether there is any other possible or permissible meaning for baptizw
than the one suggested by the symbolic significance of the ordinance. On the
contrary, we have been trying to discover whether the meaning is such as to
impair the presumptive evidence already established. Making every possible
allowance, it is certainly true that there is nothing in the literal meaning of
the word, in either its original or derived form, which will justify
overthrowing the presumption. If anything, it is strengthened by an appeal to
the linguistic argument, rather than the reverse. Baptism can always be
translated submerge without doing violence to the context. Whether it may not
also, at least at times, be translated otherwise is, at the most, an open
question. However the latter question may be decided, the presumptive evidence
derived from the symbolic significance of the ordinance remains unimpaired, and
this alone constitutes the inquiry toward which our attention has been directed.
A second item of evidence would be that derived from the translation of the
original word into other languages. The Greek baptizw, as we have noted, is not
translated in our English Bibles, but simply transferred. In many other
languages, however, it is translated. In substantially all cases where this is
done, the word used is one which signifies to immerse or plunge, in the language
in question. An exception to this rule is that of the Slavonic dialects, where
the word krestili, meaning to make the sign of the cross, or to cross, is used.
As is well known, however, the Slavonic peoples almost universally immerse so
that there is no real change of meaning understood. Among the languages to which
reference has been made are the following: Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic,
Armenian, Gothic, and Early Latin. In some cases the word used may mean wash or
cleanse as well as immerse or plunge, but the latter is the primary meaning. As
is commonly known, the Anglo-Saxon terms used, dyppan and fullian, have the idea
of both dip and cleanse. The Icelandic word skira means also to cleanse, and the
Persian shustan has the idea of washing or cleansing. In none of these cases,
however, with the exception of the Slavonic, is there any contradiction of the
idea of immerse, while in the great majority of cases the word used is one which
means directly to submerge or plunge.

There is, therefore, no argument to be derived from translations of the word
baptizw into languages other than the English, which will in the slightest
measure invalidate the presumption based upon the symbolic significance of the
term. A third argument may be derived from an examination of English
translations. Should an English version be found in which the word baptizw is
rendered in such a way as to contradict the idea of submersion, value might
attach to such a discovery. A careful survey of all the versions published in
English, which the writer has been able to secure or inspect, has not revealed a
single instance in which the word is rendered in such a manner. Among the
editions included are those of Wycklif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva, Anglo-Rhemish,
and a host of lesser known versions. A few of the latter render baptizw directly
immerse, but the overwhelming majority simply transfer the word from the Greek
into English. There is therefore nothing whatever in any English rendering to
interfere with the antecedent presumption already indicated.

IV. THETESTIMONY OFAUTHORITIES. When one consults authorities in regard to the
question of baptism, he finds the situation something like the following: A
large majority agree that the ordinance was originally performed by immersion; a
much smaller number think that it may have been performed in some other way, as
well as by immersion; and a still smaller number assert that it actually was
performed in some other manner at times. All, however, substantially agree that
immersion certainly represents an original, if not the original, mode.

It is to be noted, of course, that very many of those who assert, in the
strongest terms, that immersion was the original mode, were not themselves
immersed. Their reasons for this action have been, for the most part, that they
did not consider the mode to be of special significance and that the church in
later times had the power to change it. The destruction of the fundamental
symbolism involved in the ordinance does not seem to have occurred to men of
this class. We shall not presume to cite even the names of a large number of
authorities; the testimony of a few, however, may be of some value. The language
of the early church fathers, while not at all times specific, decidedly favors
the view that they practiced immersion. Barnabas, one of the oldest of them,
writes: "We indeed descend into the water full of sins and defilement, but come
up, bearing fruit in our heart, having the fear of God and trust in Jesus in our
spirit."1 The First Apology of Justin, written about A.D. 140, gives the
following under the section entitled Christian Baptism: "I will also relate the
manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through
Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are
making. As many as are persuaded and believe that which we teach and say is true
and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to
entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we
praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water,
and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated.
For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour
Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing in (or with)
water. For Christ also said, ’Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven.’"2

Tertullian, about A. D. 204, uses the following language: "There is no
difference whether one is washed in a sea or in a pool, in a river or in a
mountain, in a lake or in a channel; nor is there any difference between them
whom John dipped in the Jordan and those whom Peter dipped in the Tiber."

Origen writes thus in his commentary on Matthew; "Man, therefore, through this
washing, is buried with Christ, is regenerated."

Chrysostom, in commenting upon the language of St. Paul in regard to baptism,
says: "To be baptized and plunged, and then to emerge or rise again, is a symbol
of our descent into the grave, and our ascent out of it; and therefore Paul
calls baptism a burial."

Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Ambrose, Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Damascus, and
others of the Fathers use similar language. Eusebius, writing of Novatian about
251 A. , says: "Being delivered by the exorcists, he fell into a severe
sickness; and as he seemed about to die, he received baptism by affusion, on the
bed where he lay; if indeed we can say that such a one did receive it.3

Both Calvin and Luther agreed entirely as regards the original mode of baptism,
although, as was the case with the reformer of Geneva, the Lutherans did not
embody their leader’s view of the original character of the ordinance in actual
practice. Luther writes as follows: "Baptism is a Greek word, and may be
translated immersion, as when we immerse something in water, that it may be
wholly covered. And although it is almost wholly abolished (for they do not dip
the whole children, but only pour a little water on them), they ought
nevertheless to be wholly immersed, and then immediately drawn out, for that the
etymology of the word seems to demand. Washing of sins is attributed to baptism;
it is truly indeed attributed, but the signification is softer and slower than
can express baptism, which is rather a sign both of death and resurrection.
Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are to be baptized to be
altogether, dipt into the water, as the word doth sound, and the mystery doth
signify."4

Among modern reformers, Wesley and Whitefield both acknowledged immersion as a
primitive mode of baptism. Whitefield in his notes on Romans 6:3-4, uses this
language: "It is certain that in these words there is all allusion to the manner
of baptism which was by immersion, which is what our own church allows." Perhaps
few authorities more distinguished in his own field than Grotius could be named.
Grotius says: "That this rite was wont to be performed by immersion and not by
perfusion appears both by the propriety of the word and the places chosen for
its administration (John 3:23; Acts 8:38), and by the many allusions of the
Apostles, which can not be referred to sprinkling (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians
2:12). The custom of perfusion or aspersion seems to have obtained sometime
after, in favor of such who lying dangerously ill were desirous to dedicate
themselves to Christ. These were called Clinics by other Christians. See
Cyprian’s epistle to Magnus to this purpose. Nor should we wonder that the old
Latin fathers use tingere for baptizare, seeing the Latin word tingo does
properly and generally signify the same as mersare, to immerse or plunge."5

Salmasius uses similar language: "Baptism," he says, "is immersion and was
administered in former times according to the force and meaning of the word."6

Among other authorities who take the same position may be named Casaubon,
Dionysius Petavius, Vitringa, Hospinianus, Zanchius, Alstedius, Witsius,
Gurtlerus, Baddaeus, Venema, Vossius, and Scholz. Bishop Bossuet states the case
on this wise: "To baptize signifies to plunge, as is granted by all the world."
From the view-point of symbolism, no less, than the testimony of language, of
literature and of history, the results reached are therefore the same. There is
one certain, undeniable, apostolic baptism--one which no Christian can dispute
or ever has disputed. There is a tremendous weight of authority which attaches
to the words of the preacher who proclaims such a baptism. Nowhere in the world
are people more deeply concerned in securing absolute certainty than they are in
matters pertaining to religion. Any substitution for the apostolic baptism must
always weaken the authority of both preacher and church. Christianity cannot but
lose by such a substitution. What the church should insist upon is indeed the
greatest possible freedom in regard to thought and opinion, but likewise the
greatest possible certainty in regard to action and ordinance. An ordinance
partakes of the nature of a law, and the best laws are those which are most
specific and admit of the least variation or equivocation in the process of
administration. There can be no true restoration of the New Testament Church,
which does not restore its "ordinances" as well as its "doctrines and its
fruits." The ideal of the church must ever be the Pauline goal, ONE LORD, ONE
FAITH, ONE BAPTISM.

1 Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter XI. (It must be acknowledged that the Epistle of
Barnabas is of quite uncertain authorship. It is at any rate, however, of very
considerable antiquity.) 2 First Apology of Justin, Chapter LXI. 3 Eusebius’
Church History, Book VI., Chapter XLIII. 4 Opera Vol. 1, 336. 5Matthew 3:6,
Gale. 6 De Cæsarie Virorum, p. 669.


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  CHAPTER 7: DH - 07-THE CHURCH 03 � THE PLACE OF THE LORD�S TABLE
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THE CHURCH III. THE PLACE OF THE LORD’S TABLE The Last Supper.

"And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he I had blessed, he brake it,
and gave to them, and said, ’Take ye: this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and
when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said
unto them, ’This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Verily I say unto you, I shall no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until
that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:22-25). So briefly
is the story told, and added words do only mar the perfect picture of the scene.
Church history and the history of doctrines tell much of what has been in the
minds of men from that night until now. There is no history of mind and man
which will enable us to penetrate the mind of the Lord, and know how vast the
meaning was to him when he gave, and the disciples received at his hands, the
common elements of sustenance that table bore. The occasion, the simple deed
itself, the words of Jesus as he explained the meaning of his death for man,
these are the sources to which we must go if we would gather up the meaning of
the sacred feast as food for the hungering soul which yearns to feed upon the
bread of God. The Occasion. The feast of the Passover was unique in the Jewish
religion. It was the most domestic feast in the worship so largely made up of
feasts and fasts. It was celebrated in the home as the one worthy temple; the
father of the household was the one worthy priest. On the historic side, the
Passover was a memorial of a wondrous deliverance wrought by God, who was found
gracious in the day of dire need, and in the deepest darkness which enshrouded
his people. On the spiritual side, the Paschal sacrifice was a seal of the mercy
which had been ever found in God, a symbol of the continuous unity of God’s
people Israel, a token of fidelity to the redemptive God whose people could not
be enslaved by any rival sovereign. On the side of symbolism, the lamb,
world-type of innocence and gentleness, when slain, spoke, by its sacrificial
blood, of the grace of God which guarded his children’s homes, set free the
first-born son, spared him and put him in possession of all privileges and
liberties, the rights and responsibilities of a sonship emancipated from every
servitude but love to God. Above all, on the religious side, the feast of the
Passover celebrated a covenant between God and His people, a divine
condescension in which God’s goodness found expression in a revelation for the
obedience of faith on the part of man. Thus did the disciples anticipate the
return of the familiar celebration. Little did they understand that this
Passover was the final one; the end of the ancient covenant and its memorials.

Jesus’ Last Passover. The soul of Jesus yearned with strong desire for this
feast (Luke 22:15). Except that sin had not yet wrought its hateful work to the
end on him, he had finished the work given him to do (John 17:4). Under the old
covenant would he die. But the blood it shed he would make the basis and
condition of a new testament. With the disciples he would keep the venerated
feast, celebrate the old deliverance, cherish the familiar and symbolic
sacrifice, observe the rites, fill to the full all righteousness under the Law.
Then while the disciples are thrilling full of the holiest emotions the feast
could inspire, Jesus will plant in them the meaning of his death for men, and
institute, with them, a new covenant in his blood, a feast of measureless
import, a memorial of the one sufficient Sacrifice, a filial and fraternal
priesthood, an enduring publication to all earth and time of his death till he
come again. He will fulfill to the last item of its historical, prophetic,
symbolic and religious meaning, the old covenant and its great memorial. Then
will he with miraculous simplicity, set up the simpler feast, embody in a rite
the spiritual significance of "the new covenant in his blood," set forth the
realities which had been foreshadowed through the centuries, and summon the body
of his spiritual self, the church he creates and constitutes and continues, to
sit with him at his table in the feast of fellowship with God. The Deed.

Four records, are preserved for us by Paul, Mark, Luke and Matthew, of the scene
and the sayings. To the church at Corinth Paul gives what is, most probably, the
earliest written account of the supper (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). In each case
the narrative is wondrous brief. A comparison shows that Matthew (26:26-28) and
Mark (14:22-24) give the simpler and briefer record of the acts and words, while
Luke (22:19-20) gives even more detailed account than either they or Paul. While
the words of these records vary slightly, the verity of the pictured act is
perfect in each one as it is in all. So quiet, simple, perfect and natural was
the act performed, that, even though the occurrences of the next two months
would bring into light the meanings hidden and obscure to all but Christ,
neither in that presence nor afterwards, can we believe they saw the mystic
magic and strange sacramental potency which later ages read into the deed. The
Words.

It is the occasion and the deed which make the words infinitely significant in
the fewest conceivable words Jesus gave forth "the weightiest, most precise and
defining expression which he had yet used concerning his death." Under one
historic covenant they had just celebrated its memorial feast; the memorial
feast of the new and universal covenant is instituted by the unrecorded words of
blessing spoken over the broken bread and the cup, and the recorded words, "This
is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me." And also, "This cup
is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you: this do,
as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." The Meaning of the Deed and the
Words. To Gentiles the communion can never have so varied a significance as to
the Jew who becomes Christian. In the blood of those who sat with Jesus at that
table was the heritage of forty-two generations of Hebrew lineage (Matthew
1:17). The old covenant, which made the Jewish church, was real, vital, sacred,
and of vast import. We cannot apprehend the religious consciousness of the Jew
toward this gospel of his faith. Paul was called by the risen Christ to be his
witness and teacher of the Gentiles. To all of us then, as to the Gentile
Christians worshipping at Corinth, the sufficient explanation comes as with the
authority of the Lord himself.

I. THESACREDSPIRITUALFACT. The communion is, primarily, our personal
participation in the blood and body of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:26). The bread
and the cup are, therefore, the visible, physical symbols of an invisible
spiritual reality. The living Christ is Spirit. In the human universe he lives
and acts in his body, which is the church. To eat of the bread and drink of the
cup apart from this fundamental reality is to eat and drink unworthily, to bring
judgment upon one’s self, to make one guilty of the body and blood of the Lord
(1 Corinthians 11:27; 1 Corinthians 11:29). To debase and degrade the communion
into a formal ceremony, to make it a symbol or seal of aught but its divine
reality, is infinitely perilous. To make it a subordinate part of worship
overshadowed by sermon, song or ceremony is to drive spiritual reality out of
the church and leave it dead; a lifeless form. For men and women in the church,
to forsake the table and treat it as of slight account is to surrender their
participation in the body and blood of the Lord and to forfeit spiritual
fellowship with the living Christ and his living body.

II. THEPUBLICPROCLAMATION OF THELORD’SDEATH. The death of Christ for our sins is
the central fact of the Christian gospel, an integral element of the incarnation
and the resurrection. We cannot all speak with the eloquence of Apollos, argue
with the tragic masterfulness of Paul, persuade with the power of love like
John, or proclaim with the majestic certitude of Peter, but the dear Lord has
brought within the reach of the humblest and most timid of His followers a
witness-bearing more potent, more incontrovertible, more persuasive and mighty
than all the words of all mankind. The silent eloquence of the table which
testifies by bread and cup of Jesus’ death for the sins of man, the silent
eating of the bread and drinking of the cup, ofttimes in tears of contrite
penitence and grateful joy--this is the true witness the body bears before the
world of the realities summed up in him who is Head over all the church.

III. THECHANGELESSMEMORIAL OF THELIVINGCHRIST. A memorial is more than merely a
reminder. Vital principles which have given rise to historic changes in life are
commonly made continuously significant by a regularly recurring memorial day,
while the deed, the historic fact, is made continuously potent by a regular,
recurring memorial act. The use of two elements, the bread and the cup, makes it
easy for the superficial and unthinking mind to make the bread merely a reminder
of a crucified body, and the cup a similar reminder of the blood shed on the
cross. In reality, Jesus makes both the bread and the cup a single memorial of
his timeless and sinless self,--"Do this in remembrance of me." The historic
verity of the fact that "Christ died for our sins" is witnessed to by the love
in which the simple and sublime memorial of Jesus Christ is enshrined in the
hearts of his followers in all generations. Memorials, days and deeds, cannot he
perpetuated on the basis of falsehood, bear ceaseless testimony to facts which
never took place in human history. The whole gospel of God’s forgiving grace in
Christ Jesus is preached most powerfully by the mute witness of the Lord’s
table, the bread and the cup which speak of him who was and is Saviour and Lord
forever more.

IV. THEPLEDGE OFFIDELITY. The church is the social, human body of the living
Christ. The church consists of the personal Christ and persons who do his will.
In the midst of life’s distractions and harsh abrasions it is easy to lose the
keen edge of spiritual susceptibility and to prostitute spiritual relations into
legal or formal or empty ritual requirements. In the first days of the church of
Christ it seems that the exuberant joy of the Christians led them to "continue
steadfastly--in the breaking of bread," and to observe the divinely appointed
memorial "day by day," "breaking bread at home" (Acts 2:42; Acts 2:46). Years
later, in Troas, the Christians there had learned to "gather together on the
first day of the week to break bread" (Acts 20:7). It is incredible that fixed
times and places and forms were set even by unwritten law for the observance of
a memorial feast whose very essence is the expression of loving fidelity to the
Lord of the body, the Christ of the church. But in reverent affection and in
mutual regard, all them that were devoted to Christ and loved his presence had
their common participation in the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

V. THEBOND OFUNITY.

Like Christian baptism, the Lord’s table is set in the church not as a source of
discussion, dissension and discord, but, on the contrary, to unify the spirit
and sentiment of the people who are the church, as they contemplate in silent
communion their indissoluble unity as members of the living body of the Lord.
Only perversions of the fundamental fact and purport of the feast can ever be a
source of division among people who, as the body of Christ, cannot be sundered
spiritually from each other or from the Christ whose they all are. Men disagree
among themselves only when they begin to talk. When they are silent before the
table and Jesus Christ alone speaks, they all are one in him.

Conclusion.

Thus does the new covenant of grace and love, sealed and secured by the blood of
Christ, replace all other covenants between the gracious God and the sons of
men. Thus is the body of Christ, the church, constituted and controlled by the
mind of Christ. Thus surely does the church of Christ have fellowship with the
Redeemer and the redeemed. Thus is the body of Christ kept chaste and pure and
unified. Thus, beyond the reach of all adverse argument and cavil of faithless
and unbelieving men, does the church bear most powerful witness to the spiritual
and historical facts of the gospel. Thus, in the earth and among men, do the
persons who are the church share in the sacrifice by which the miracle of
forgiven sins is continued and confirmed. Thus do ye "proclaim the Lord’s death
till he come again."


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  CHAPTER 8: DH - 08-THE CHURCH 04 � THE PLACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH
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THE CHURCH IV. THE PLACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH MARION
STEVENSON

I. NAMES.

1.Old Testament. The first biblical mention of the Holy Spirit is in Genesis
1:2, in the story of creation, where the name given is, "the Spirit of God":
"The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." This continued to be the
name of what we call "the Holy Spirit" until God assumed covenant relations with
his chosen people in the time of Moses, in the personality of Jehovah. While the
people were still at Mount Sinai, Moses said, "Would that all Jehovah’s people
were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them" (Numbers 11:29). The
"Spirit of Jehovah" is, from this time, the characteristic Old Testament
designation of the Holy Spirit.

2.New Testament. The Spirit of God, or the Spirit of Jehovah, of the Old
Testament, becomes "the Holy Spirit" in the New Testament. This is the
characteristic New Testament name, occurring not at all in the Old Testament
except in one instance, Psalms 51:11, where David prayed, "Cast me not away from
thy presence; and take not thy holy Spirit from me." The Old Testament names of
the Holy Spirit persist in the New Testament, as is seen from Matthew 3:16, "the
Spirit of God"; and from Acts 5:9, "the Spirit of the Lord." Other New Testament
names of the Holy Spirit are: "the Comforter (John 14:16), "the Spirit of truth"
(John 14:17), "Spirit of Christ" (Romans 8:9), the "Spirit of Jesus" (Acts
16:7), the "Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Php 1:19), the "Spirit of his Son"
(Galatians 4:6).

II. NATURE. The Holy Spirit is not manifested at first as a distinct
personality, but, "in the elder Scriptures the Spirit of God is, in general, his
life, his vital energy, his innermost self. As the spirit of a man is the man,
so the Spirit of God is God. It may be the mind of God, and so God himself.
Thus, as regarding the Most High, the Spirit was an effluence, the energy of God
pouring forth; as regarding things, it was an affluence, his energy flowing
upon; as regarding men, it was an influence, his energy flowing into."1 A
wonderful and noteworthy fact in the Old Testament is God’s assumption of
distinct personality in the presence of Jehovah dwelling in the midst of a
chosen people in the Cloud, in the Tabernacle, and in the Temple, "the Holy One,
the Redeemer of Israel." Thus God was in the midst of his people. When God came
into close covenant relations with his chosen people in the person of Jehovah,
the Spirit of God continued to operate under the name of the "Spirit of
Jehovah." In its operation it continued to be the "vital energy" of God,
directed by Jehovah for his purposes of grace. A higher manifestation of God’s
glory followed in his Incarnation, when the One who had dwelt in the midst of
his people in the Cloud became flesh and made himself "in all things like unto
his brethren." His name is now Jesus. He is still the Holy One and the Redeemer
of his people. During the personal ministry of Jesus, the divine power continued
to operate under the name of "the Spirit of God," under the personal direction
of Jesus, the Son of God. For a little time Jesus tarried in his world. When, as
of old, he was driven away by disobedient belief, it was then that a third
manifestation of God came in the Holy Spirit’s assumption of personality. It was
not God’s will to leave the world without his presence, therefore the Comforter
came, dwelling in his people as God had before dwelt among them.

III. PERSONALITY.

"A distinct person must have thought, feeling, and purpose all his own. All
these the Holy Spirit has; and they are not the less his own because he adopts
them all from the Father or from Christ. He teaches (John 14:26), therefore
thinks. That he also feels, Paul shows us in warning the Ephesians that the
Spirit may grieve (Ephesians 4:30), and in assuring the Romans that he joys
(Romans 14:17), and loves (Romans 15:30). It is as expressly an exercise of will
that he commanded Philip to join the devout treasurer of Candace (Acts 8:29), or
Peter to visit Cornelius (Acts 10:19-20), or the church at Antioch to commission
Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2; Acts 13:4), or, again and again checks the
activity of the missionaries (Acts 16:6-7). Most explicit of all is the sobering
and steadying message to the Corinthians who were covetous of showy gifts, that
the selfsame Spirit provides to every man severally as he will (1 Corinthians
12:11).2 The personal name of the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. As God sent his
Son into the world, so the Father would send the Comforter in answer to the
request of Jesus, "I will pray the Father and he shall give you another
Comforter, that he may be with you forever" (John 14:16). Thus Jesus returned to
his Father, leaving with his disciples the comforting expectation of the Holy
Spirit, who assumed personality on the day of Pentecost and became in his
various operations the manifestation of God in the world. This assumption of
distinct personality by the Holy Spirit made it possible for the New Testament
writers to speak of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; each of
the three being God, and the three constituting God.

IV. OPERATION.

1.In the Old Testament. In creation the divine energy went forth in the Spirit
of God which "moved upon the face of the waters." When the people were building
the tabernacle at Mount Sinai, Jehovah filled Bezalel "with the Spirit of God,
in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship;
and to devise skillful work, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and
in cutting stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of
skillful workmanship. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach" (Exodus
35:30-34). Artistic skill and ability to teach were thus imparted by the Spirit
of God. When David was anointed by the prophet Samuel, "the Spirit of Jehovah
came mightily upon him from that day forward" (1 Samuel 16:13). David received
power from the Spirit of Jehovah. The Spirit of God not only imparted skill, but
was also the Spirit of revelation. Nehemiah in his prayer to God expressed the
common opinion of the Jews that the prophets spoke as the Spirit of God gave
them utterance; "thou testifieth against them by thy Spirit through thy
prophets" (Nehemiah 9:30). This is also the idea expressed in Isaiah 61:1, "The
Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek." Ezekiel believed that he spoke under the
influence of the Spirit of Jehovah; "the Spirit of Jehovah fell upon me and he
said unto me, speak" (Ezekiel 11:5). The Old Testament functions of the Spirit
of God are summed up in Isaiah 11:2 : "The Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon
him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah."

2.In the New Testament.

(a)In the Person and Work of Jesus. The coming of the Christ into his world in
the person of Jesus was the most momentous fact of human history. The activity
of the Spirit of God in connection with this event is noteworthy. To Zacharias
was promised a son, who, as the forerunner of the Lord, should be "filled with
the Holy Spirit, even from his birth" (Luke 1:15). The angel Gabriel was sent to
Nazareth to tell a betrothed virgin that she would bear a son who should be
called "the Son of the Most High." In answer to her perturbation the angel
explained, saying, "the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten
shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). At the birth of John, Zacharias is
prophesying in the Holy Spirit, not only concerning his son, but also concerning
"the dayspring from on high" (Luke 1:78). And there was Simeon, upon whom the
Holy Spirit had come, and to whom the same Spirit had revealed that "he should
not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ," and who "came in the
Spirit into the temple" (Luke 2:25-27) when the parents brought in the child
Jesus. Thus we observe the Spirit of God preparing the way for, and
accomplishing the fact of the Incarnation. When the time came for Jesus to
inaugurate his ministry, the Holy Spirit from heaven testified that he as the
Son of God (Matthew 3:16). In order that he might be prepared for his work of
redemption, he was "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of
the devil" (Matthew 4:1). He thus obtained through the leading of the Spirit, a
practical experience of the problems of the task of redeeming men who were
oppressed by Satan.

After his temptation "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee"
(Luke 4:14). He came to Nazareth, entered into the synagogue, and read the
prophecy of Isaiah which begins "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he
hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor," and announced to the
people, "to-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:16;
Luke 4:21). In this wonderful manner the Holy Spirit brought the Son of God into
the world and qualified him and endowed him for his work. The Holy Spirit not
only came upon Jesus and into him, but now proceeded from him in power, under
his own personal direction. When people were amazed at his mastery over evil
spirits, he explained his wonderful works by saying that he cast out demons "by
the Spirit of God" (Matthew 12:28). The Holy Spirit was not foreign to Jesus. In
the later Scriptures he is called the "Spirit of Jesus." The Holy Spirit’s
operation in him, and through him, was therefore the necessary and natural
expression of Jesus’ being.

(b)In the Person and Work of the Apostles. When the twelve disciples were
sorrowing because Jesus was soon to leave them to go to his Father, he gave them
the promise of the Comforter (John 14:16). On the Mount of Olives, he gave them
his parting promise and charge just before his ascension, saying, "tarry ye in
the city until ye be clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49), and, "ye
shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you" (Acts 1:8). The
promise of Jesus was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when "there came from
heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house
where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues, parting asunder,
like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:2-4). This miraculous manifestation and impartation of
the Holy Spirit was related only to that occasion, and we cannot therefore
expect to have it reproduced or imitated in our own experience. It was at once
the demonstration of the Lordship of Jesus who had been crucified, and at the
same time the induement of power for the apostles. Pentecost has not been
repeated. The nearest approach to similar phenomena was in the household of
Cornelius (Acts 10:1-48), where, however, the purpose of the manifestation was
distinctly different, being intended to indicate God’s willingness to accept the
Gentiles. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the twelve on the day of Pentecost,
meant more than comfort and power. Before he went to his Father, Jesus had
spoken thus of the coming Comforter to his apostles: "He shall teach you all
things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you" (John 14:26).
"When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth"
(John 16:13). It is evident that the apostles understood that the coming of the
Holy Spirit upon them on Pentecost was the fulfillment of this promise. Luke,
the historian of the occasion, says: "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts
2:4). Peter explained the phenomena by quoting the prophecy of Joel which
related the gift of prophecy to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

What it meant for the apostles to experience the operation of the Holy Spirit,
not only as the Comforter, but also as "the Spirit of truth," is explained by
the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Paul speaks of God’s wisdom hidden in
mysteries which were unknown to the wise men of the world, and impossible of
knowledge to those who were unspiritual. But the deep things of God were
revealed freely to the apostles "through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth
all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10). This revelation
was freely given and the apostles spoke it to men "in words which the Spirit
teacheth" (1 Corinthians 2:13). The revelation was so full that Paul could say
"we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16).

Peter who was the spokesman on Pentecost, believed that the Gospel was revealed
through the Holy Spirit, and that it was preached "unto you by the Holy Spirit
sent forth from heaven" (1 Peter 1:12). The revelation of the truth through the
Holy Spirit was not confined to the spoken words of the apostles. They not only
spoke, but also wrote under the control of the Spirit of truth, so that we have,
from the pens of the inspired writers in the New Testament Scriptures, not only
the historical narrative of the progress of the church of God, but also the
revelation of God’s will concerning the church.

(c)In the World. Of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the world Jesus said,
"When he is come he will convict the world in respect of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of
righteousness, because I go to the Father; of judgment, because the prince of
this world hath been judged" (John 16:8-11). This Work of conviction was
accomplished by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy
Spirit demonstrated the fact of the glorification of Jesus at the right hand of
God, manifesting the sin of those who rejected him in disbelief. His going to
the Father demonstrated his righteousness, although he had been numbered with
the transgressors in his death. His assumption of a place at the right hand of
God reversed the judgment of the Prince of this world who had succeeded in
crucifying Jesus by false accusation before earthly tribunals.

Because Jesus went to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to announce his
assumption of Lordship, it still stands true that the man who rejects Christ is
convicted of sin, and of his own unrighteousness, and is in danger of judgment.

(d)In the Conversion of Sinners. The King James Version of Peter’s words,
"Repent ye therefore, and be converted" (Acts 3:19), has been displaced by the
Revised Version, "Repent ye therefore, and turn again." Upon the old version was
founded the doctrine of conversion by the immediate and therefore miraculous,
operation of the Holy Spirit. A better understanding of the constitution of man
and of the Scriptures necessitates and confirms the modern, accurate
translation. Conversion to God concerns and engages the whole being of man. In
no similar situation is a man passive or utterly dependent upon influences which
disregard his nature. A man can only change or be changed in his life by
influences which seek and secure the co-operation of his own faculties. God made
him so, and therefore does not disregard his own order when turning a man to
himself. A change of conduct or character presupposes deliberate judgment,
adequate motive, and effective will. Therefore, when there comes to a man the
experience expressed in the words, "born of the Spirit," we may be sure the Holy
Spirit has the proper material to offer to the judgment, to the motive, and to
the will.

Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of Christ" he does not disregard the
will of Christ in his manner of operation. Therefore, while it is said that we
are "born of the Spirit" (John 3:5), it is also said, "Of his own will he
brought us forth by the word of truth" (James 1:18), and, "having been begotten
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God,
which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1:23).

Observation and experience confirm our judgment that in conversion the Holy
Spirit does not operate apart from the word of God, spoken or written. There are
no recorded instances of conversion to God apart from some knowledge or some
impartation of his word.

(e)In the Believer. To all who believe the message of the gospel, this was the
promise given by Peter on the day of Pentecost: "Ye shall receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all
that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him" (Acts
2:38-39). The unspeakable gift of the indwelling Spirit of God is granted only
to those who obey him (Acts 5:32). Therefore Peter said, "Repent ye, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your
sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). The birth
of Christ was the incarnation of the Word. Since the beginning of obedience to
the gospel of Christ on the day of Pentecost, we have the continuing and ever
present miracle of the incarnation of the Spirit of God in believers. As we
meditate upon this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we find it to be the
fulfillment of the promise of Jesus who said, "If a man love me, he will keep my
word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode
with him" (John 14:23).

What the indwelling Spirit does for believers is written in the New Testament
Epistles. In the eighth chapter of Romans, Paul tells us that we are free from
condemnation because "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made us free
from the law of sin and of death." In verse 11, our immortal bodies are to be
raised from the dead "through his Spirit that dwelleth in you." In verse 13, "by
the Spirit" we are to "put to death the deeds of the body." In verse 14, we are
"led by the Spirit of God," and are therefore, "sons of God." In verse 15, the
Holy Spirit is "the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." In verse
16, "the Spirit himself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are children of
God." In verse 26, "the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings
which cannot be uttered," and in verse 27, the Spirit "maketh intercession for
the saints according to the will of God." The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in
the believer is strongly and beautifully characterized by Paul in a striking
figure of speech in 1 Corinthians 3:16; "know ye not that ye are the temple of
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" If the reference be to the
church is a congregation of believers, the fact is not less true in regard to
each individual Christian.

Paul wrote to the Galatians: "because ye are sons, God sent for the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6). Therefore he
says "walk by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16), for if we are led by the Spirit
there will be in our lives "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23), which are
the "fruit of the Spirit." To the Ephesians Paul wrote that the Spirit was the
seal and "an earnest of our inheritance" (Ephesians 1:13-14). Paul’s prayer was
"that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be
strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man" (Ephesians 3:16).
To the whole church the Spirit imparted unity "in the bond of peace" (Ephesians
4:3). Paul also writes, "grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
sealed unto the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). He also writes, "be filled
with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). But the Holy Spirit was not simply to dwell
in the believer for his individual help, but was also to proceed from him as the
Spirit proceeded from God and from the Son, in power. Jesus said, "he that
believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers
of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on
him were to receive" (John 7:38-39). A variety of such operations of the Holy
Spirit proceeding from believers is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. When we
ponder the meaning and the value to ourselves of the personal indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, we will be careful not to "quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians
5:19).

(e)In the Church. The Church is the body of Christ. It is to be expected
therefore, that the Spirit of Christ will animate the church, and that the will
of Christ will become operative in and through the church, because of the Spirit
of Christ which dwells in it. We are not surprised therefore to read in Acts
13:2; Acts 13:4, that the Holy Spirit selected and sent Paul and Barnabas from
the church at Antioch to the foreign mission work. Nor are we surprised to learn
from Acts 15:28, that the Holy Spirit was active in composing the difficulty
which threatened a schism in the church over the question of the relation of the
Gentiles to the gospel and to the law of Moses. "Nor do we deem it strange to
hear Paul say to the elders of the church at Ephesus in Acts 20:28, "Take heed
unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you
bishops, to feed the church of the Lord which he purchased with his own blood."
We cannot think of the Holy Spirit residing in the church indifferent to its
sustenance and preservation. The Holy Spirit is the life-giving principle of the
church, the body of Christ, as the Spirit of God is the very life of God
himself. Consequently, we expect a Spirit filled church to give manifold
evidences of the presence of the Spirit. We have satisfaction therefore in 1
Corinthians 12:1-31, where Paul, speaking of the church under the figure of a
body, says, "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there
are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities
of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all. But to each one is
given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. For to one is given
through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge,
according to the same Spirit; to another faith, in the same Spirit; and to
another gifts of healings, in the one Spirit; and to another workings of
miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discernings of spirits; to
another divers kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues;
but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one
severally even as he will."

According to this scripture, the church is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit
fulfilling in its activities every relation which Christ constituted between
himself and the world.

One of the first words of Jesus to those who looked longingly after him was,
"come" (John 1:39). The message of Jesus to the world in his personal ministry
was, "Come unto me and I will give you rest." The Spirit speaking through the
church by the gospel of Christ is continuing to say to all nations, Come. Thus,
through the church, the Holy Spirit continues to testify of Christ, and the
closing words of the book of Revelation say, "The Spirit and the bride say,
come" (Revelation 22:17).

1 The Holy Spirit, Johnson, p. 7. 2 The Holy Spirit, Johnson, pp. 21, 22.


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  CHAPTER 9: DH - 09-THE CHURCH 05 � THE PLACE OF MISSIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH
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THE CHURCH V. THE PLACE OF MISSIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH

A. MCLEAN The Lord Jesus, the Founder of the church, regarded himself as a
missionary. Early in his ministry he applied to himself the words of Isaiah.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good
tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." He spoke of himself frequently as one
sent of God, that is, a missionary. We have these phrases in the Gospels: "He
that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me;" "As thou has sent me into the
world;" "Neither have I come of myself, but he sent me." The frequency with
which this thought occurs, more than fifty times, demonstrates the fact that he
was a missionary. The twelve men whom he selected from among his followers that
they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have
authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of
disease and all manner of sickness, he named apostles or missionaries. Much of
his time was spent in training these men for their life work. While he was yet
with them he sent them out, two and two, into the cities and villages of Israel.
They were to preach as they went, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."
They were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out
demons. As they had received freely, they were to give freely. Somewhat later he
appointed seventy others, and sent them, two and two, before his face into every
place and city, which he himself was about to visit. This work as it was related
to the people was evangelistic; as it was related to themselves it was
educational. Their experience on these short tours prepared them for their work
in the larger field. Our Lord’s work and the work of his disciples during his
earthly career was confined to Palestine. Of himself, he said, "I am not sent
but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." He charged the twelve not to go
into any way of the Gentiles, and not to enter into any city of the Samaritans;
but to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The time which they
could devote to this ministry was brief. He told them that they should not have
gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of man would come. Besides, the
twelve were not yet fully qualified for work among the Gentile nations. Not only
so, but it was the purpose of God that the people he had been training since the
days of Abraham were to hear the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, first.
Moreover, it was not until after the death and resurrection of our Lord that
there was a full gospel for these men to preach.

While it is true that the apostles were restricted to Palestine, it is plain
that this restriction was regarded as temporary. The fact that such a
restriction was imposed leads one to think that the apostles were thinking of
the larger field. The striking saying, "Let the children first be fed," shows
beyond question that a world-wide thought was in the mind of Jesus from the
beginning. There are many indications of this in his teaching. Thus we hear him
say, "Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world." Again, "And
they shall come from the east and the west, and the north and the south, and
shall sit down in the kingdom of God." And again, "Other sheep have I which are
not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice: and they
shall become one flock, one shepherd." And yet again, "This gospel of the
Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the
nations." He told the twelve that they should be brought before governors and
kings for his sake. Referring to the woman that anointed him in the house of
Simon, the leper, he said, "Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout
the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be told for a
memorial of her." Alluding to his death on the cross, he said, "And I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." Again, we hear him
say, "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." In his
interpretation of the parable of the Tares, he said, "The field is the world. "
In applying the parable of the Vineyard and the Husbandman to his hearers, he
said, "The Kingdom of God shall he taken from you, and shall be given to a
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." The universality of the gospel was
manifestly not an afterthought, but was an essential part of the original
program of our Lord. For good and sufficient reasons the universal commission
was not given till after the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The work
of redemption was then finished; the gospel was completed; the limitations which
had restricted its extension were removed. Now they are to go everywhere and
publish the good tidings of salvation through the Crucified. Our Lord’s parting
charge is reported by all four Evangelists. As given by Matthew it reads, "All
authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and
make disciples of all the nations." As given by Mark, "Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to the whole creation." As given by Luke, "Thus it is
written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third
day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem." As given by John, "As the
Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Just before the ascension he said to
them, "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye
shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto
the uttermost part of the earth." The commission given to the apostles is the
climax of the Gospels. All that goes before leads up to it and prepares for it.
So Warneck truly says, "The gospel of Jesus Christ necessarily issues in a
missionary commandment. It is penetrated through and through by thoughts of
universal salvation which make it a religion for the whole world. These thoughts
move through all the teaching of Jesus, and necessarily led, when his saving
work was accomplished, to the institution of missions." The book called "The
Acts" shows how the apostles understood and obeyed the commission of their Lord.
It gives some account of the planting of the church in Jerusalem and of the
spread of the gospel till it reached the heart of the Empire. Tradition says
that the apostles remained in Jerusalem for twelve years. In those years a
strong and prosperous church was built up by their labors. We have the statement
that believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and
women. At the expiration of that period the apostles entered upon their
missionary vocation, and James, the Lord’s brother, who was not one of the
twelve, was left in charge of the church.

If the apostles were slow of heart to engage in the work outside the Holy City,
it was not because they were ignorant of the world-wide scope of their
commission. In his first sermon, Peter quoted the words of Joel, "It shall come
to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my spirit upon all
flesh;" and again from the same prophet, "And it shall be, that whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." And in his second recorded sermon
the same apostle quoted the promise given to Abraham, "And in thy seed shall all
the families of the earth be blessed," and added, "Unto you first God, having
raised up his Servant, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you
from your iniquities." A little later he said, "And in none other is there
salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among
men, wherein ye must be saved." It was not because the apostles did not
apprehend the teaching of their Lord that they delayed for so long a time
entering the regions beyond, but for other reasons. On the day of Pentecost the
Holy Spirit was poured out upon the believers who were assembled for prayer, and
they began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. Peter stood up with the
Eleven and preached to one of the most cosmopolitan audiences ever addressed by
any man. There were dwelling in Jerusalem at that time Jews, devout men, from
every nation under heaven. In Peter’s audience there were Parthians and Medes
and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, in
Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about
Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and
Arabians. These representatives of the Jews who were dispersed all over the
Empire and the proselytes to the Jewish faith were in touch with their own
people and it is almost certain that through them the story of what took place
on Pentecost was published far and near. Of those who heard Peter’s first
sermon, three thousand believed and were baptized. The converts continued
steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread
and the prayers, and the Lord added to them day by day those that were being
saved. We read that every day, in the temple and at home, they ceased not to
teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ. As a result of their persistent efforts
many of those that heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be
about five thousand. A little later it is said that the word of God increased;
and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly; and a great
company of the priests became obedient to the faith. This work went on and the
church was established in all Judea and Galilee and Samaria. The apostles had to
contend against opposition and to endure persecution, but they were not
dismayed. When they were beaten they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to
suffer for the name of their Lord. The growing opposition to the new faith led
to the death of Stephen, the first martyr. His death marked a new stage in the
progress of the church. By that time the essential differences between Judaism
and Christianity became apparent, and as a necessary consequence the sympathy of
the Jews towards their Christian brethren became antipathy. So it came to pass
that the martyrdom of Stephen was followed by a great persecution against the
church in Jerusalem, and the members were all scattered abroad throughout the
regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Those who were thus scattered
abroad went about preaching the word. Among this number was Philip, one of the
seven deacons, who went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed unto them the
Christ. The record states that the multitudes gave heed with one accord unto the
things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he
did, and they were baptized, both men and women, When the apostles heard of what
had taken place in the city of Jerusalem, they sent Peter and John to look into
it. When they had accomplished the purpose of their mission and had testified
and had spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem. It is added
that they preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

Having completed his missionary work in Samaria, an angel of the Lord spoke to
Philip, saying, "Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down
from Jerusalem unto Gaza." Philip obeyed at once. On the way south he fell in
with the treasurer of Queen Candace, of Ethiopia, who had gone to Jerusalem to
worship, and was reading the prophecy of Isaiah on his return. The Spirit told
Philip to go and join himself to the treasurer’s chariot. He did so, and on
invitation went up and sat with the treasurer and preached Jesus to him from the
Scripture he was reading, and baptized him. Tradition tells us that this man who
was the first Ethiopian to receive the gospel was the founder of the church in
his own country. The Spirit caught away Philip and he was found at Azotus: and
passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, till he came to
Cæsarea. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus, which took place within a few years
after the Ascension of our Lord, was an event full of significance for the
church. He had been breathing out threatening and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord; he had been exceedingly mad against them, and had
persecuted them even unto foreign cities. He arrested and shut up many of the
saints in prison, and when they were put to death he gave his vote against them.
When Stephen was stoned Saul stood by and consented, and kept the raiment of the
men that slew him. While he was on his way to Damascus in search of Christians
to bring them bound to Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to him to make of him a
minister and a witness both of the things he had seen and should see, and to
send him to the people of Israel and to the Gentiles, to open their eyes, that
they might turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. As
soon as Saul was baptized he began to proclaim Jesus, that he is the Son of God.
On his return to Jerusalem he preached boldly in the name of the Lord; and he
spoke and disputed with the Grecian Jews. Saul was a missionary to the Gentiles,
as Peter was to the Jews. Saul glorified his ministry as a missionary to the
Gentiles. He made it his aim so to preach the gospel, not where Christ was
already named, that he might not build upon another man’s foundation; but as it
is written, "They shall see to whom no tidings of him came, and they who have
not heard shall understand." More than any other man that ever lived, Saul of
Tarsus established Christianity in the world. Next to his Lord, he was the
chiefest of all the missionaries who have sought to fill the earth with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters fill the sea. Saul’s one
ambition was to present the Gentile world as an acceptable offering to God the
Father, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

While Jerusalem was still the headquarters of the apostles Peter, on one of his
missionary tours, visited Lydda. There he healed a man named Aeneas, who had
been palsied and bed-ridden for eight years. All the citizens of Lydda saw the
miracle that had been wrought in Aeneas and they turned to the Lord. From Lydda
Peter was called to Joppa. There he restored Dorcas to life, and, as a result,
many believed on the Lord. From Joppa the Holy Spirit directed Peter to Cæsarea
to preach to Cornelius and his household. Peter demurred at first, but afterward
consented and went. While he was preaching to this Gentile family, the Holy
Spirit fell on all that heard the word, and Peter commanded them to be baptized
in the name of Jesus Christ. The conversion of Cornelius marked another stage in
the progress of the church. Prior to this event the gospel had been preached to
none who were not of the seed of Abraham or proselytes to the Jewish faith. Now,
for the first time, it is preached to Gentiles. Some of the brethren of the
stricter sort contended with Peter because he went in to uncircumcised men and
did eat with them. Peter expounded the matter in order unto them, and concluded
his defense by telling the apostles and the others that the Holy Spirit fell on
that Gentile family as he began to speak as upon the Twelve when they believed
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and added, "Who was I, that I could withstand God?"
When they heard those things they held their peace, and glorified God, saying,
"Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life." The author of
The Acts stated that those who were scattered abroad upon the tribulation that
arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phœnicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch,
speaking the word to none save only to Jews. It is possible that they had not
heard of the epoch-making event in Cæsarea when Peter preached to Cornelius and
to his family and the ratification of Peter’s course by the Apostles and the
brethren in Judea. In any event those scattered disciples confined their
ministry to members of the Jewish race. But there were some of them, men of
Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they reached Antioch, spoke to the Greeks also,
preaching the Lord Jesus. "The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great
number that believed turned to the Lord." Later, under the preaching of
Barnabas, "much people was added to the Lord." In that city Barnabas and Saul
continued a whole year, and taught much people. There is a tradition that the
church in Antioch numbered 70,000 at one time.

It was in Antioch that the Holy Spirit said to the prophets and teachers who
were there, and as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, "Separate me Barnabas
and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." "Then, when they had fasted
and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away." So they, being
sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and
from thence sailed to Cyprus. They proclaimed the word of the Lord from one end
of the island to the other, beginning at Salamis and ending at Paphos. Then,
sailing from Paphos they crossed over to the mainland. They landed at Perga in
Pamphylia, and passing through from Perga came to Antioch in Pisidia. Having
been invited by the rulers, of the synagogues to speak if they had any word of
exhortation, Saul, or Paul as he is henceforth called, preached a sermon that is
reported more at length than any other preached by him. His hearers were so
impressed and so pleased that they asked him to repeat his sermon on the next
Sabbath day. Seeing how popular he was with the Gentiles, the Jews were filled
with jealousy and contradicted his words and blasphemed. In his reply Paul
quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah, "I have set thee for a light of the
Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the uttermost part of the
earth." His course in speaking to Gentiles as well as Jews, was in accordance
with what their own prophet had said long before. In that city as many as were
ordained to eternal life believed, "And the word of the Lord was spread abroad
throughout all the region." The uproar caused by the enemies of the gospel in
this as in other cases caused it to be published broadcast. The persecution that
was stirred up against Paul and Barnabas caused them to shake off the dust of
their feet against them, and to go on to Iconium. They entered the synagogue of
that city, and so spoke that a great multitude both of Jews and Greeks believed.
Learning that it was the purpose of both the Gentiles and of the Jews with their
rulers to treat them shamefully and to stone them, Paul and Barnabas left
Iconium and fled unto the cities of Lycaonia, Derbe and Lystra, and the region
round about, and there preached the gospel. In Lystra Paul was stoned and
dragged out of the city as dead. In Derbe many disciples were made. Derbe was
the western and northern limit of Paul’s first missionary tour. From Derbe Paul
and Barnabas retraced their steps through Lystra and Iconium and Antioch in
Pisidia and Perga and Attalia, and thence by sea to Antioch in Syria, from
whence they had been committed to the grace of God for the work which they had
fulfilled.

After two years Paul and Silas started on a second tour. They passed through
Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches. Thence they went on to Derbe and
Lystra. On their way they delivered the decrees that had been ordained by the
apostles and elders in Jerusalem. "So the churches were strengthened in the
faith, and increased in number daily." Having passed through the region of
Phrygia and Galatia, they wished to speak the word in the Roman province of
Asia, but were forbidden by the Holy Spirit. Going on until they came over
against Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus
suffered them not. Then passing by Mysia they came down to Troas. While waiting
in Troas for orders a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There was a man of
Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and saying, "Come over into Macedonia and
help us." Paul and those that were with him sought to go into Macedonia
straightway; for they concluded that God had called them to preach the gospel in
Europe. Setting sail from Troas they made a straight course to Samothrace; and
the next day to Neapolis; and from thence to Philippi. In that city the first
church was planted on European soil. The next place entered by Paul and his
fellow-workers was Thessalonica. He reasoned from the Scriptures with the people
in the synagogue for three Sabbath days, seeking to convince them that the Jesus
he preached was the Christ. Some of the Jews were persuaded and of the devout
Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. From Thessalonica
Paul and Silas went on to Berea. The people of Berea received the word with all
readiness of mind, and examined the Scriptures daily to discover whether the
things they heard were so. "Many of them therefore believed; also of the Greek
women of honorable estate, and of men, not a few." The next city in which Paul
preached was Athens. After hearing his discourse in the midst of the Areopagus,
some mocked; others, more courteous, said, "We will hear thee again concerning
this matter." "But certain men clave unto him, and believed: among whom was
Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them."
Leaving Athens Paul went on to Corinth. He spent a year and six months in that
city, teaching the word of God. "And Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue
believed in the Lord with all his is house; and many of the Corinthians hearing,
believed, and were baptized." On his third and last missionary tour Paul spoke
for three months in the synagogue of Ephesus, reasoning and persuading as to the
things concerning the Kingdom of God. On account of the opposition of some of
the Jews he separated himself and the disciples from the synagogue and spoke
daily in the school of Tyrannus. "This continued for the space of two years; so
that all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
Greeks."

After this Paul purposed in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and
Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, and after that to Rome. While he was in Jerusalem he
was arrested and carried away to Cæsarea where he was kept as a prisoner for
more than two years. On appealing to Cæsar he was taken to Rome for trial. After
his arrival he spoke from morning till evening to a great number that visited
him in his lodging; to whom he expounded the matter, testifying the Kingdom of
God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, both from the law of Moses and the
prophets. "Some believed the things that were spoken, and some disbelieved."
Paul abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went
to him, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching the things concerning the
Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, none forbidding him. While he was waiting
the convenience of the emperor, he was establishing the church in the capital of
the Empire. The book entitled the "Acts" is a missionary book. Every part of it
has missionary significance. But it does not give a complete account of the
missionary work of the whole church. It gives an account of the work of Peter
and Paul and does that only in part. The work of the other apostles is not given
at all. But it is evident from the rapid spread of the gospel into so many
places that these men were busy somewhere. Tradition tells us that Matthew and
Bartholomew and Nathaniel labored in Arabia; Matthias in Ethiopia; James the son
of Alphaæus in Egypt; Simon the zealot in Mauritania and Libya; Thaddeus in
Mesopotamia; Thomas in the district adjoining Parthia; and Philip in Phrygia.
How reliable this tradition is it is not easy to determine.

It is apparent that the work of spreading the gospel was not confined to the
apostles and to the men and women whose names are found on the pages of the New
Testament, Warneck states that in the youth-time of its first love the whole
church was practically a missionary church. Gibbon says that it became the most
sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations the
inestimable blessings which he had received. We are told on the very best
authority that the supreme characteristic of the apostolic church was the
missionary zeal and activity of the individual members. Soldiers, sailors,
merchants, miners, craftsmen voluntarily made it one of their chief objects,
whether at home or abroad, in private or public life, to extend to others the
gospel message. "Then, as in no period since, was it true that every individual
Christian was a missionary."

Garrisons of soldiers were stationed along the frontiers of the empire; these
military establishments became centers from which Christianity spread outside
the civilized world. When the armies pushed beyond the boundaries of the Empire,
Christianity was sure to go with them. History shows that Christian soldiers
captured and enslaved by barbarians were the means of converting whole nations.
The New Testament church was essentially a missionary organization. With it
missions was not a by-work or a by-play, but the first work, the chief concern,
the supreme business of all who called themselves disciples of Jesus Christ.
Harnack has shown that the most numerous and successful missionaries were not
regular teachers, but Christians themselves, by dint of their loyalty and
courage. Above all, every confessor and martyr was a missionary; he did not
merely confirm the faith of those who were already won, but also enlisted new
members by his testimony and his death. "While he lay in prison, while he stood
before the judge, on the road to execution, and in the act of execution itself,
he won people to the faith. We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission
of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries."
Women as well as men shared in the work. Paul sent salutations to fifteen women
who rendered conspicuous service to the cause. The Roman Empire embraced the
then known world. The area of the Empire was two million square miles; the
population was one hundred millions. The Empire included part of three
continents, Asia, Africa and Europe. All three abutted on the Mediterranean. The
Roman Empire was preëminently an empire of cities, and the Mediterranean
furnished easy access from city to city. The conquest of the Empire for Christ
was the one task before the church of that time. The records show that the
gospel was preached in all parts of the Empire before the close of the first
Christian century. In the Epistle to the Colossians, the author states that the
gospel was bearing fruit in all the world and increasing: and again, that it was
preached in all creation under heaven. By the time of John’s death there were
Christian churches all over Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece proper, the
islands and Italy. Peter, in his First Epistle addressed the sojourners of the
dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, and sent greetings
from Babylon. Christianity found a lodgment from Spain to Babylon, and from Rome
to Alexandria. Churches or believers were found in the following places:
Jerusalem, Samaria, Lydda, Joppa, Sharon, Cæsarea, Antioch in Syria, Tyre,
Sidon, Ptolemais, Pella, Tarsus, Salamis, Paphos, Perga, Antioch in Pisidia,
Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Ephesus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Smyrna, Sardis,
Philadelphia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, Cenchreæ, Crete,
Rome and Puteoli. It is probable that churches or believers were found in the
following places: Edessa, Arabia, Petrea, Alexandria, Cyrene, Ancyra, Rhodes,
Mileta, Carthage, Spain, Dalmatia, Britain and the Rhone Valley.

Writing of the spread of Christianity Professor Purves says, "Our information is
scanty, but there can be no doubt as to the fact. We have already noted its wide
diffusion in the last years of Paul. That it entered Egypt with much power is
proved by the remains of early Christian literature in that land from early in
the second century. There is also reason to believe that it entered Arabia and
Parthia, and possibly India, as well as in the West, Germany and Gaul. It
touched Spain and perhaps Britain: while throughout the central parts of the
Empire it had its adherents in every country. The language of the Revelation
(e.g., 7:9) implies that the new faith included representatives of all nations.
Clement of Rome (A.D. 96) refers to the apostles as preaching everywhere in city
and country. Ignatius (A.D. 110) writes of bishops settled in the farthest parts
(of the earth). Pliny, governor of Bithynia and Pontus in A.D. 112, found the
Christians so numerous that the worship of the temples had suffered severely. It
is probable that by the close of the century companies of believers existed in
all the larger cities and many of the smaller towns of the empire, and that the
new religion was represented from the Atlantic to the Indus, and from Germany to
Egypt and Arabia."

All races and all conditions were included. All nations were fellow-heirs, and
fellow-members of the body and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel. All partition walls were broken. There was no distinction
between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich
unto all that call upon him. In the church there was neither Jew nor Greek,
neither bond nor free, neither male nor female. A Christian because he was a
Christian felt that he was a debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to
the wise and to the foolish. The converts represented every rank in society.
Most of them were from the humbler classes; but there were some, though not
many, who were wise; some who were mighty; and some who were noble. The gospel
met the needs of every human soul.

There were several things that greatly assisted the missionaries in the New
Testament church. The first of these were the great roads built by the Romans
for military and commercial purpose; the missionaries travelled along these as
they went out to make disciples of all the nations. The caravan routes, we are
told, led into the common basin of the Mediterranean, from Central Africa
through the Sahara by several ways, down the Nile, from Yemen along the Red Sea;
from the Persian Gulf through the Syrian desert; from Mesopotamia, the center of
the trade of Central Asia, to which came the treasure from the Persian Susa,
Hyrcania and Bactria, which in turn drew from China and from Hindustan and
Farther India. The whole coast of southern Asia was familiar to the merchants,
and regular routes by the sea were open, finding their natural termini in the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Commerce came pouring down from the region of the
Baltic and from distant Britain. All this made it easy for those men who were
seeking to obey the parting command of their Lord to accomplish their purpose.

Secondly, the Greek language was understood in all parts of the Roman world. The
Roman legions conquered Greece, and Greek letters and arts in turn conquered the
conquerors. The New Testament was written in Greek and could be read by
intelligent men everywhere. In passing from province to province and from
continent to continent the Christian missionaries did not need to stop and
master a new and strange tongue.

Thirdly, the Jewish people were scattered abroad over the Roman Empire and even
beyond its boundaries. Every land and sea was full of them. It was not easy to
find a place in the world which had not received this race and was not occupied
by them. The temple in Jerusalem was the cradle of the infant church. The
believers continued steadfastly in the temple day by day. We know how Paul
entered the synagogues of the cities in which he preached, even though he was a
missionary to the Gentiles. The Jewish people carried their great promise and
their great hope with them into all the world. In this, way they greatly
assisted the work of the apostles and their associates. With the Roman
government to police the world, with highways and harbors facilitating journeys
by land and sea, with a universal language at their command and with Jewish
people and prayer bands distributed all over the empire, the apostles went forth
to conquer. These accessories enable us to understand how it was that they won
such marvelous triumphs in so short a period of time.

Moreover, they were greatly helped by the Lord himself. "They went forth, and
preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the
signs that followed." The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has both by signs
and wonders and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according
to his own will. In sending out his chosen and trained missionaries our Lord
said to them, "And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." He
assisted them in these particulars: he gave them wisdom and faith and courage;
he enabled them to heal the sick, to cast out evil spirits, and to raise the
dead; he opened prison doors and brought them out; he removed serious obstacles
as in the case of Herod when he was disposed to kill Peter as he had killed
James; he guided them in the selection of their fields; he cheered them with
assurances of his presence and deliverance and victory; he filled them with
peace and joy and satisfaction in the service to which he had called them. The
chief motive that impelled the missionaries of the New Testament church was
their love for Christ. They had seen him rejected as an imposter and crucified;
they desired to see his claim to be the Son of the Highest and the Savior of the
world vindicated. They earnestly desired to see many diadems on his head, and
the sceptre of universal empire in his hand; they desired to see him recognized
as King of kings, as Lord of lords, as the blessed and only Potentate. They
thought of the need of men, too, but their controlling motive was less than that
their love for their Lord and their wish that he should receive the honor that
was his due. Like the Moravians later, they sought to give to the Lamb that was
slain the reward of his sufferings.

Unquestionably, missions had the first place in the New Testament church, and
none other. The apostles were not theologians, or prelates or philosophers, but
messengers, and their one work was to give the gospel to all mankind. They did
not take time to write elaborate treatises on systematic theology or on the
philosophy of the Christian religion: their work was of a different nature. What
they wrote was written in the thick of the fight against paganism. They wrote as
Cæsar and Napoleon wrote their military dispatches, on the field of battle.
Their writings are missionary documents and nothing else. The Gospels furnish
the missionary with his message: they affirm that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of the living God, and they furnish the evidence of that grand proposition. The
book we call The Acts is a record of the missionary activity of that time. The
Epistles were written to mission churches and have to do with the conduct of the
members. The book of Revelation is a forecast of the final victory, when all
rule, and all authority, and all power opposed to Christ shall be abolished, and
when he shall reign from pole to pole with undivided and undisputed sway. The
church of the New Testament had this one task on hand and undertook in good
faith to accomplish it.

Missions were the business of that church. Important as buildings and other
equipment are, they were considered of secondary importance. The work of filling
the world with the gospel was the one work of supreme importance, and to the
doing of that one work the church addressed herself with all possible
earnestness and with all the resources she could command. As a result we read
that "the word of the Lord grew and multiplied," and again, that "so mightily
grew the word of the Lord and prevailed:" and from another source that "the
fires of the faith burned down to the water’s edge all around the Mediterranean
and remade the Roman world." The church of the New Testament had all confidence
in the universal triumph of the Gospel. They looked for the new heaven and the
earth wherein dwells righteousness. They believed that "all Israel should be
saved," and that "the fulness of the Gentiles should be brought in." John saw a
great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all
tribes and peoples and tongues; and they cried with a great voice, "Salvation
unto our God who sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb." When the seventh
apocalyptic angel sounded there followed great voices in heaven, and they said,
"The kingdom of the world is become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ:
and he shall reign forever and ever." John saw the nations walking in the light
of the Holy City, and the kings of the earth bringing their glory into it. He
heard as it were the voice of a great, multitude, and as the voice of many
waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, "Hallelujah: for the Lord
our God, the Almighty reigneth." While the forces of darkness opposed them and
sought their destruction, the early missionaries were cheered with the exceeding
great and precious promise, that "all flesh should see the salvation of God; for
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."


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  CHAPTER 10: DH - 10-THE CHURCH 06 � THE PLACE OF CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH
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THE CHURCH VI. THE PLACE OF CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH
MRS. M. E. HARLAN The church is God’s agency for the exercise of Christian
stewardship. Every principle of good service, every impulse toward helpful
doing, every consciousness of obligation, every proper exercise of stewardship
emanates from the church or from the forces made by the church.

Stewardship an Honored Position.

Christ was master of the art of illustration. From nature, history, and current
events he drew the figure settings in his marvelous messages to men. Every act
of his life, as well as every sentence in his sermons, was the effort to make
the people understand the dignity of worthy service and the call to co-laborship
with him. In the age of Christ’s personal ministry, stewardship never meant a
petty position. It always carried obligation next to that of the crowned head of
the commonwealth. So in the parable of the talents and the unjust steward, the
strongest possible figure is used to emphasize the fact that unfaithfulness to a
trust in the world’s work is treason, for the one who has proven disloyal to
personal responsibility is high in authority in the royal household.

Some Bible Meanings of Stewardship.

Elder--In a specific sense the eldership is stewardship, responsible for the
dispensing of truth and wise counsel and the exercise of executive direction
over the entire Church.

Bishop--In the bishopric is vested the same heaven-born obligation. So vital is
this significant service that certain requirements in character are clearly
stipulated:

1. To be master of his own manhood (Titus 1:7).

2. To have a determined and tenacious grip on the truth (Titus 1:9).

3. To be armored with sound doctrine (Titus 1:13-14).

4. To be one who loves, men and whom men love (Titus 1:8).

Shepherd--Is an office like unto that of bishop with this exception, the former
implies leadership rather than directorship. Shepherd is a stronger figure and
more comprehensive. It includes all the essential points of
stewardship--overseer, obligation even to the limit of life, a dispenser, all
crowned and dignified by example--a going before. Can men and women successfully
lead into large service when their own work measure is empty? Can they inspire
to sacrificial giving, when they live in luxury themselves? Can they count an
atom’s weight in turning the wealth of the world into the treasury of missionary
and philanthropic service when their barns and pastures and fields and coffers
are full and the gates and doors are closed to the appeal of need?

Minister--Also means steward, steward of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians
4:1-2). What are these mysteries? Can they be analyzed, developed, and dispensed
for practical good to the earth family? Many things may be mentioned. Four
special ones are suggested:

1.Life. Not mere existence, not a body bulk of flesh and blood and muscle, with
breathing, moving, and reproductive functions, but the higher life of good
thinking and helpful doing.

2.Love. That "never faileth" (1 Corinthians 13:1-13). This is the supreme
element, God himself. While our eyes are holden and we look out from the house
of clay, ultimate comprehension of this mystery cannot be attained. The minister
steward by teaching it, by living it, by leadership, by directorship in the
church, aids the love mystery to become the real and vital entity in the world’s
work.

3.Sacrifice. Of Self.--Has anyone ever fully understood why? But does lack of
discernment prove nonentity? Nature’s laws, which are God’s laws, practically
decree there can be no life without death, no blessing without giving, and no
service bearing the standard seal without sacrifice. The minister steward cannot
reveal and dispense the inspiration of this mystery until he lives the mystery
in the midst of his people. Of Substance.--Another deep mystery, the revealing
of which makes every man my brother and every woman my sister, every motherless
or needy child my own, every son without a father my son, every daughter alone
in the world a member of my family. If my brother needs a keeper, that is a
portion of my task. If my sister is lost, I must go to the rescue or my money
must help equip the searching party. When the little ones cry for bread, my
granary doors burst open and the golden grain must flow speedily to the lips of
hungry children.

4.The Gospel for Others. The greatest mystery revealed to the Jews was that the
favor of the Father, his gospel, was for the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:3-6). For
centuries Israel possessed special information, special prophecy, and special
agencies for a world-wide service to all the races of men, but had failed in
their stewardship. The church to-day possesses the fact of this failure and the
complete revelation in Christ of the Father’s plan for his people. Why should it
be a mystery that the gospel is not only for those of Anglo-Saxon blood, and
those through whose veins course the Hebrew current of life, but that it is also
for the black man, the brown man, the yellow man, the red man, for the men and
women of large opportunity and also for those stunted by tragic and limited
environments?

If I did not believe it is the will of the Father that every man and woman and
child is to he told the story of his love, I think I could not believe there is
a God. The message of the Master, "Go, go build into the world my life, my
love," is the climax evidence of his Messiahship. O Church of Christ, if we go
not, the candlestick of promise will be removed from our midst, and we, too,
will have failed in our stewardship. The steward of God’s mysteries, the
minister--and every Christian should be such--is essentially a faith builder (1
Corinthians 3:5). Christian life, Christian love, Christian sacrifice, and
Christian missions are the four corner stones and the revealer of mysteries that
promote worthy stewardship life.

Every Man and Woman and Child a Steward.

We possess nothing. The silver is the Lord’s, the gold also, and the cattle on a
thousand hills are his. The seas are wider his control. The land was made by him
and is given to us in trust. The power to get wealth is not of ourselves. Time
is not our own. Every moment is a trust fund. To waste time is tragic. To use it
for no profit is pathetic. To employ it for self when it should be utilized for
the growth and power of the church is sin. Even our life--the closest possible
proximity to actual personal possession--is an absolute trust. "All souls are
mine." "The world is mine and the fulness thereof." The bodily form of the human
kind signifies stewardship. Man is not a creeping thing with his nostrils to the
dust, but he stands erect, with his face to the sun. His hands are not claws to
destroy, but can open with benediction to comfort and soothe. A Christian
steward is given a talent, a commission, and power to execute. Every normal life
possesses in some measure these three elements. All such are debtors. Debtorship
implies stewardship. Stewardship signifies called to service, not for ourselves
but for "others," for "No man liveth unto himself" and no man possesseth unto
himself, else with the living and with the possessing he will die not only unto
himself but unto the good of the church.

Diversity of Stewardship Talent.

Every Christian attainment places the person who possesses it under the
obligation of stewardship. If you can sing, sing the "Old, Old Story," sing the
"Messiah," and "The Peace that Passeth Understanding," sing to the disconsolate,
sing something for somebody’s good. If the stewardship of speech in but one
language is yours, hasten with the message. If you are a master of many
dialects, and the body is strong, manifold are your obligations. If you are an
artist, contribute the product of your brush to the story of love and the power
of the church. If you are a teacher, it is yours to help build the immortal.
Never place a doubting thought of God or the eternal verity of things in any
human heart. He who does it is criminal to the limit of insatiate cruelty.
Better the steel stab than the death blow to faith. If you are a student of
nature, react of God in the rocks, the trees and the stars and tell the
beautiful story to children and to those whose feet may be slipping away from
the truth. If you are a physician, your talent is doubled the moment you enter
your Christian stewardship. Next to the minister steward, or collaborating with
him, or possibly superior in opportunity to him, is the Christian physician. "Is
your father at home?" asked a gentleman of a bright little by who was playing on
a doctor’s doorstep. "No, sir," was the answer, "he’s away." "Where do you think
I can find him?" "Well," said the child, thoughtfully, "you’ve got to look for
some place where people are sick, or hurt, or something like that. I don’t know
where he is, but he’s helping somewhere."

If your talent is money making, you can daily multiply yourself for the uplift
of the race. "Money is power." It is a legitimate expression of personal energy.
It is mind in material form. It is hand and heart and even soul power, for only
creation with soul thought produces values. Money is a part of ourselves. Dare
we say we give ourselves when we withhold this supplement to ourselves, the
money power, and say, Yes, I will give self, I will do the face to face,
personal work, to uplift the fallen, but the gold and the silver I will lay away
carefully in a beautifully initialed napkin that when I am gone those who unfold
it may know my purpose in life was to move a little piece of marble from its
home in the hills and place it on a tiny plat of ground that the world may know
I lived, and died.--What then, O God; What then--if you have robbed the bank of
God? If you have failed in properly exercising the stewardship of wealth?

Steward a Debtor. The steward "does not own his wealth, but he owes it."

1.To the Government.

I doubt if one has reached the estate of true citizenship until he has
contributed something for the maintenance of the national life--either money, or
thought--or has borne arms in the conflict for principles. There is a dignity in
tax paying second only to the significance of tithe offering.

2.To the Church.

It is a mooted question whether a person can be a member of the church and not
contribute for the ministration of the church and for the upkeep of the
buildings and equipment. Even before a man has understood and acknowledged his
duty to formally accept the leadership of Christ and fellowship in the church,
if he locates his home in a land where the principles of the Christian religion
make life and home and nation worth the name and insure him against heathendom
and cannibalism, he is much beneath the dignity of a true man if he withholds
liberal contributions to the church.

3.To Foreign Missions. The local church is first. It must be maintained as the
foundation for the home base. As an individual cannot live for himself alone, so
the church, if it seeks to simply perpetuate itself locally, must die. It is the
law of the natural world. It is equally so of the spiritual world. The door of
every nation now stands open for the gospel. God loosened the locks when he knew
his church possessed the means adequate to enter. When one billion, two hundred
and fifty million people are non-Christian, when over six hundred million have
never heard of Christ, when there are thirty million in Japan and sixty million
in Africa yet unevangelized, when there are four hundred million in India, China
and Central Asia who have never heard a Christian message, when two hundred
million Mohammedans are yet to he reached by the gospel, a careful study of the
chart of world facts will stir the Christian steward to quick and decisive
action for foreign missions.

4.To Home Missions. When cities and towns and villages by the hundreds in our
land have never heard the plea of the Disciples of Christ, the plea for
Christian union, when many church organizations are without pastoral care, when
foreign people at the rate of one every twenty-two seconds are coming to our
shores, when Buddhism and Hinduism have erected their altars within our gates
and Mohammedanism has her shrines located in the capital city of the center
state of our American Commonwealth, when King Alcohol still holds high his hydra
head, when the bulwarks of our nation, the sanctity of our homes are threatened
by the increased divorces and the inroads of the worse than black plague, it is
time for the stewards of wealth and purity and principle to pour into the church
and other properly organized channels the sacrifice of self and substance. There
was never a better day for courageous effort than right now, never an age when
the need of money and men and women of the heroic mold was so great.

5.To Educational Institutions. The great universities in the world are here
because there were those who believed in Christ and the church, those who were
conscious of the power of a Christian education and recognized the study of life
in all its phases, the study of nature in all her aspects, the study of science
and philosophy, of literature and logic, together with the study of spiritual
forces, are essential in the making of the highest type of life. As the church
is first and supreme in the Father’s plan for the uplift of the races of men, so
the Christian stewardship of the church should make the Christian colleges of
the land stand first in world-wide purpose, and in cultural and technical study.
The maintenance fund should be such as to adequately remunerate Christian
specialists, that there may be time for further research. On the other hand,
this is also a field where the steward of large mental capacity and pedagogical
talent may make his investment for the commonwealth of God without naming a
price.

Here the Christian steward of money or mentality has opportunity to multiply
himself a million fold, to project himself into the future, to make his thought
have being in the life energies a thousand years hence, to make his money and
mind speak and act when his voice is stilled and his earth life is forever past.

Christian stewardship established in Indianapolis the Missionary Training
School, with its purpose to aid in the testing and training of missionaries for
the Church of Christ. Such stewardship gave being to Bethany, and Butler, to
Hiram, Transylvania, and Drake, to Oklahoma and Texas Christian Universities, to
Cotner and Kimberlin Heights, and to every Christian educational institution in
the United States and in the lands abroad. Dare anyone say the men and women who
gave the money founded these institutions? If so, they had equal co-workers in
the teachers and executors who served without salary and gave their best without
price or accepted only an existence remuneration. When the honor roll is called,
we could name, of such, a list that would reach to the skies.

6.To Hospitals.

Jesus spent much time healing the sick and sore bodies of people. He soothed the
turbulent spirits of strife and of fear by the health touch of his marvelous
power. We cannot minister by miracle, but such as we have we owe to this service
of Christian benevolence. People can do without food for a time. Much clothing
is not necessarily essential to life, but the sick, need both and more. To
achieve in the realm of art, to attain success in the business world, to become
kings in commerce, to promote great architectural and civil engineering
enterprises, to reach the plane of statesmanship, to be permitted to grapple
with national and world problems, is success, but there is something greater. To
know the human body, to possess the surgeon’s skill, the physician’s knowledge
of life, the nurse’s ability to execute orders and administer curative agencies,
is success with a deep and emphatic underlining. Blind is the steward of
resources who does not see in the sick human body opportunity for the exercise
of art, science, and Christian, business, and brotherhood principles. To
preserve this body by tender ministry, to build into it more of the Christ
compassion, to conserve it for stewardship service to others, is success
approximating the supreme. The Master still pleads with his church, heal the
sick of my people, and all are mine.

7.To Social Service.

This, too, is practical Christianity, or Christianity in practice. Yea, it is
Christianity at its task. It is working while we are praying. It is teaching
while we are learning. It is doing while we are seeing and where we are seeing.
It is service among the needy. It is going about doing good. It is moving
forward "in his steps." It means money giving, and large giving. It means
consecrated talent for wise distribution. And more, it means brilliant thought
and courageous purpose not yet fully attained to propagate the preventive
agencies--the purity of Christ and the principles of his institution, the
church. The Christian Steward a Specialist in Finance.

1.Makes Wise Investments. A woman and other members of her family made gifts for
the education of Jacob Kenoly. A life, though it tabernacled in a house of black
clay and served but a span of three years, alone with God, established a mission
station in Africa. Cyrus Hamlin had life and purpose to serve the people of the
Ottoman Empire. It took the supplement of a New York merchant’s money to make
possible the great Robert College at Constantinople. It is said Cyrus Hamlin
made the new Turkey. Did he? If so, he had a colaborer in all the task. A young
man was asked why he wanted to be a missionary. At once he replied, "I want to
help build a nation." Worthy stewards of the church, will you not permit your
money to colabor with such a life? There is yet "much land to be possessed,"
much people to be remade, many riches both temporal and spiritual to be garnered
by the steward of Christian finance.

2.Converts Material Commodities into Mental and Spiritual Energies.

Gold and silver, bonds and stocks and real estate holdings, have value only as
they are contributors to physical, mental, and spiritual forces. Money buys and
prepares food and makes and buys books. True knowledge of nature will give an
uplift toward God. Fellowship with the Father will build a bond of brotherhood.
A sense of brotherhood crowns every man a king. King stands for power. Power
increases value. Such values double in quick succession, if with the increase in
value there is a corresponding increase in the sense of stewardship of those
values. This steward finance specialist is a man of vision, one who sees
opportunity. His outreach is speedy and permanent. He builds his money into
life, and life is eternal. It is safer than bank vaults and its utility is
multiplied in infinite succession. The Steward Must Make Three Decisions.

1.Whether He will be True to the Trust. No one can decide for him. The pastor
and official board of the church may present the needs of the local church and
the call to world-wide service. Missionary secretaries and various expert
messengers may tell of the millions without God, of the darkness in pagan lands,
of vast sections of the earth peopled with his brothers and sisters and no
doctor nearer than 700 miles. He may read of these things, but the steward must
put his own hand into his own pocket or he may straighten himself and grip an
empty hand so tight as to prevent pocket entrance. These crisis moments
sometimes mean death to the steward as well as loss to the cause being
presented. In such hours, it takes a steward of Christian statesmanship to lead
to a wholesome committal of wealth to the cause of good.

2.When Gifts Should Be Made.

Here, too, there must be voluntary decision. Each Lord’s Day, as God has
prospered, a gift should be made for the local work. If for this, why not also
for missions abroad--the supreme business for which the church exists? A new
knowledge of need should call forth a gift or a pledge. God some way supplements
the accumulating, conserving, and economic capabilities of worthy pledgers to a
worthy cause, making possible the fulfilment of the obligation. In an emergency
call, the steward is stone who is not moved to practical compassion. In leading
to the exercise of Christian stewardship, the problem is to awaken a
consciousness that the need of the church is a daily emergency. People are dying
about us and the church could save them if we would discharge the tasks in our
stewardship. Our neighbor is dead in woeful sin. We, too, are dead to duty.
Proximity seems to deaden our sensibility of sin. God pity the near-sighted
steward as well as the unjust one.

3.What He Shall Give.

Like the rich young ruler, the steward may sometimes he called upon to dispense
to the absolute and extreme limit of his possessions, e. g., to save his own
life. The consciousness of daily toil being essential to daily food and raiment
develops athletes in the world’s work and restores decadent will and muscle
power to successful endeavor.

"Wealth of the self indulgent rich," says Ruskin, "should be called their
ill-th." Failure to discharge the stewardship function produces a congestion
that stultifies high thinking and wholesome doing which in the end produces
death to the spiritual impulses of life. Who will challenge that to save the
life of another, even if it he only the earth life, it is the duty of all to
give to the limit of the last piece of our possession?

I plead with my own heart and I plead with every steward in the Church of God,
is flesh and blood and body more than the being that, dwells in the human house?
Give all if the Master needs it. Give a portion it it is enough.

Failure in Stewardship Means Death.

Stewardship implies authority, ability, and resources (Matthew 25:14-21). With
such wealth of power, kings are wont to be vested. If a person possessing such
opportunity, when commissioned to a task, proves traitor, is there anything to
do but to declare his commission annulled? If he could speak truth, if he could
preach the gospel, if he could help others preach it, if he could establish the
principles of Christian stewardship in other lives, if he could throw a life
belt to a drowning man, if by the gift of a cup of cold water a noble son could
be given back in health to a widowed mother, and will not, is there any law that
will prevent paralysis of the arm that refuses to exercise and the heart that
stops the pulse beat of response to the call of need?

Stewards of special power and possessions, what is your obligation? If you can
conduct great architectural achievements, if you can create commerce and control
finance, your stewardship is boundless, for you control both men and money. For
such a one, the call of the King is all you have, all you are, all you will be,
all you can do, all you can give is not your own, but is yours only in trust. It
belongs to my children, to your brothers. Dispense bountifully, wisely, and
systematically.

If you possess land, if the hills with their ore wealth is yours, if you hold a
mortgage on the rivers of oil, if the coal beds lie in your landed estate, if
the forests are your possession, and you are a Christian, O man of God, how
tremendously wonderful are your opportunities, and how just will be the
retribution of disaster to you if you fail in your obligation! Have you pastures
and flocks, are the cattle and sheep on western and southern ranches yours, are
the vast wheat fields or the smaller plots of production, and the corn and
cotton acreages your source of income? Consider who made the sun and the soil,
who stored the winds with the alchemy of life and growth, and out in the field
or forest, some day, alone with God and the stars to look down at you, and the
company of only the birds to remind you of the sparrow story, look at yourself,
then look at India and China, at Tibet and Turkey. Raise your eyes to a vision
of the continent even yet as "dark as midnight." Behold the isles of the sea,
all waiting for what you call give them or can help send them, and if you are
not stirred to the exercise of your stewardship, you are on the verge of defeat
and your life’s Waterloo is inevitable.

Success in Stewardship Means Life.

Jesus had no personal possession but his human life. Have you ever asked why
Christ should die? His poverty in world-wealth left nothing but his life to
give. In the midst of universal selfishness, there was no way to establish
Christian stewardship but by example, so the sacrifice was made ,and not only
does he still live, but the impulse of his life shows us how to give and how to
live. Give effort for the joy of somebody and the blue sky of Heaven will shine
above you. Give thought for the relief of the suffering and your own pain will
be forgotten. Give comfort to the broken-hearted and the self-burden will grow
lighter. Give love and compassion and even the physical heart action will double
its power. Give food to the hungry and a home to the homeless and God will
increase the larder. Give time to think and plan and give and do for the
church’s local and world enterprises and you will live a decade in a day. The
windows of knowledge and conception, vision and large living, open only to the
faithful steward.

Give all for Christ and the church.


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  CHAPTER 11: DH - 11-THE CHURCH 07 � THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST
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THE CHURCH VII. THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

W. R. WARREN

Unique among the religious forces of the world are the ten thousand independent
congregations known locally as Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ or
Christian Churches, and animated by the one supreme and controlling purpose of
giving the Lord Jesus Christ supremacy in all things. The movement began a
hundred years ago in several quarters of the United States. Since then many
independent beginnings have been made on virtually the same basis; all of which
have merged into the general movement on becoming acquainted with its spirit and
plea. The movement appears under four chief aspects: As a reformation, a
restoration, a union and a crusade. The Current Reformation.

Foremost of those who began at the first of the nineteenth century to protest
against the unscriptural divisions in the family of God and to renounce all
human creeds as tests of Christian fellowship, were Barton W. Stone of Kentucky,
who took this position in 1803, and Thomas Campbell, a recent immigrant from the
north of Ireland, who published "A Declaration and Address" in 1809, Washington,
Pa. The question was not as to whether the creeds were true or erroneous. The
sad experience of the Christian world had demonstrated that they were
necessarily divisive. In later years a current statement, attributed to
Alexander Procter of Missouri, has had general acceptance: "If the creed
contains more than the Bible, it includes too much; if it contains less than the
Bible, it contains too little, and if it is just the same as the Bible, it is
unnecessary." The plea was that every individual should "stand fast in the
liberty wherewith Christ has made him free." If he wishes to formulate a creed
for himself, based upon the teachings of God’s word, that is his privilege; but
he has no right to force it upon anyone else. At the same time it is not only
his right but his duty to resent and resist any effort to compel him to accept
as authoritative anything outside the plain teachings of Christ and his inspired
apostles.

These new reformers accepted gratefully the fruits of the Lutheran Reformation,
but protested that it had stopped short of the goal and crystalized into a sect
that was scarcely less intolerant than Rome. They honored Calvin and his
insistence upon the sovereignty of God, but refused to wear the yoke which he
sought to bind upon all believers. They accepted the full, legitimate fruitage
of the great Wesleyan Revival, but declined to give themselves into subjection
to the Methodist system. So they appreciated the good that had been wrought by
Baptists and Independents, but were equally unable to put themselves under the
hard and fast restrictions of either of these parties.

Crying out against both the divisions of the one church of Christ, and the
intolerance of all the creeds and sects, they lifted the watchword "Back to
Jerusalem," and sought to heal all the divisions in the body of Christ by
adopting at once a creed that would forever need no revision, being nothing more
nor less than the great confession pronounced by Peter and endorsed by our Lord
himself: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." This, they insisted,
was by our Lord’s own authority, broad enough to include all Christians and
narrow enough to exclude all who are not Christians. Not only so, but they soon
and generally began to teach that this is not a propositional but a personal
creed; that it demands, not faith about Christ, but faith in Christ. In the
preaching of a hundred years every sermon has ended with the direct appeal to
the hearers for immediate and outspoken decision: "Do you accept Christ?" The
mainspring of the movement was a rediscovery of the great intercessory prayer of
our Lord in the seventeenth chapter of John: "That they may all be one, that the
world may believe," and the recovery of the book of Acts as the beginning of the
prayer’s fulfillment in the ministry and mission of a united and victorious
church. The reformers said: "Let us renounce all our party names, absolve
ourselves from all man-made creeds, forget all our prejudices and all our
traditions, all our prides, and all our possessions outside of Christ, and
restore the Christianity of Christ and His apostles in its message, its form and
its life." The Restoration of the Christianity of Christ.

Immediately they began to preach, both publicly and from house to house the
gospel of the first century instead of the theology of the eighteenth century.
Their textbooks for this proclamation were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They
memorized these sacred writings. "Protracted meetings" lasting two and four
weeks and longer, were held that were simply straightforward and glowing
expositions of one or another of these holy documents. Both logically and
experimentally it was found in accordance with Romans 10:17 : "Belief cometh of
hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." This eliminated at once the
dependence upon the direct, miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit upon the
hearts of sinners and the arbitrary bestowal of faith as a gift from God to the
elect. They recited the facts of the gospel and found that belief of the story
led regularly to the acceptance of Christ as both Lord and Saviour. The
recognition of Christ as King involves implicit obedience to him. The believer,
like Saul of Tarsus, cries out, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" First and
most fundamental of the Saviour’s commands is "Repent." The mission of the Son
of God in the world was "to save his people from their sins." Since man is a
free moral agent, he must concur in this process by renouncing sin and choosing
holiness. It is not sufficient to believe--"The devils also believe and
tremble." There must be a change of heart, a right-about face. As the prophets
of old had preached, "Cease to do evil, learn to do well." This had been the
burden of the preaching of John, the forerunner, and continued without abatement
throughout the personal ministry of the Lord himself.

He commissioned his apostles to establish the church. In compliance with this
holy charge, when the condition which he had named had been fulfilled in the
descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the first gospel sermon was
preached and three thousand souls became obedient to the faith, thus
inaugurating the Church of Christ in the world, with the same sanction of divine
approval that had commended the beginning of the Saviour’s personal ministry.
More than a coincidence there is manifestly in the facts that Jesus asked
baptism of John in the Jordan where he was preaching baptism for the remission
of sins, saying "Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness," and that the
answer of Peter and the rest of the apostles on the day of Pentecost to the
three thousand who cried out in faith, "Brethren, what shall we do?" was,
"Repent ye, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto
the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
The primary command to be baptized is to be obeyed implicitly. This requires
that its subjects must be such as can believe and repent. That it must be
immersion in water is clearly indicated by the meaning of the word itself and
the context of every reference to baptism. The design is the remission of sins,
"not by putting away the filth of the flesh, but by the interrogation of a good
conscience toward God. Infant baptism was necessarily excluded, not only by the
requirement of faith and repentance, but by the failure to find scriptural
reference to baptismal regeneration, the theological dogma on which infant
baptism was originally based. Emphasis was placed upon the spiritual
significance of the ordinance and its merely ceremonial character set aside. It
is the outward expression of faith. It is the sacred symbol of the Lord’s death
and resurrection. It is typical of the new birth into the Kingdom of Christ. It
is the initial step of the penitent believer in a life of obedience. Its whole
value is in its relation to the Christ in whose name alone it is valid. As the
facts of the gospel were accepted and the commands of the gospel obeyed, the
promises of the gospel were realized. First, there is the remission of sins;
second, the gift of the Holy Spirit as the abiding comforter in the heart of the
believer. As he "continues steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
in the breaking of bread and the prayers," he shall be "kept by the power of
God" and share an incorruptible inheritance with the saints in light.

Examination of the New Testament records seemed to show conclusively that the
church established in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and the local
congregations set up in Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome and elsewhere by the
inspired apostles, kept every first day of the week as a day of rest and
worship, the "Lord’s Day," in memory of the Saviour’s resurrection, and on that
day regularly celebrated the Lord’s Supper, which he had instituted, "the same
night in which he was betrayed." As baptism was a solemn covenant between the
individual believer and his Lord, expressive of faith on the one hand and
redemption on the other, so was the Lord’s Supper a weekly pledge of love and
fellowship between the soul and his Saviour. Therefore, the table is spread in
the name of the Lord and the church neither invites to it nor debars from it,
but enjoins all who are in Christ to remember him in accordance with his
expressed desire. As the local New Testament church was presided over by elders
or bishops to look after its spiritual interests and served by deacons to
minister to its necessities in temporal affairs, this general order of
organization has been followed, with an effort to choose for the officers those
members who manifest the moral and spiritual qualifications specified in the
epistles. Where elders and evangelists give their entire time and strength to
the ministry of the word, the prevailing custom, in accordance with apostolic
injunction, is to supply them their living.

Christian Union. At the outset the reformers refused to establish separate
churches. The Christian Association at Washington was made up of members of many
different churches and was really a missionary society, its one declared purpose
being the preaching of the gospel in needy parts. When they were refused
fellowship in all the existing churches, they improved the occasion by
establishing congregations as nearly as possible after the normal New Testament
pattern. It is generally accounted that the first was that of Brush Run, near
West Middletown, Pa., in 1811, though the erection of its building was commenced
in the previous year. The membership of these churches, as of the Christian
Association of Washington, was drawn from different quarters so that from the
first there was not only a plea for Christian union, but the practice of it. In
the earnest desire to heal rather than hurt the body of Christ, the Brush Run
church in 1813 united with the Redstone Baptist Association, having been refused
admission into the presbytery of Pittsburgh. The opposition among the Baptists
compelled the Campbells and their friends to remove from the Redstone
Association to the Mahoning Association in 1823, and this having practically
accepted in full the position and principles of the reformers, dropped the
Baptist name and the associational organization in 1829. At about the same time
Thomas and Alexander Campbell, his son, who had become the real leader of the
movement, were powerfully reinforced by union with Walter Scott, a Presbyterian
from the University of Edinburgh, who had independently arrived at substantially
the same position. In 1831, Mr. Campbell and Barton W. Stone united their forces
in a memorable meeting at Lexington, Ky. Some of Stone’s followers, however,
never consented to the coalition, but continue to this day in a denominational
organization as the "Christian Church." Not only were these three main currents
and many tributary streams of reformers thus united in one mighty movement, but
into all of these had come in happy fellowship representatives of all existing
denominations, both protestant and Romanist. There was not only a union of
believers, but synthesis of excellencies in the continued life of all the
churches. As the movement has grown for a hundred years, it furnishes a
continuous acceptance of the apostolic injunction in First Corinthians, which,
paraphrased for America, would read, "All things are yours; whether Luther, or
Calvin, or Wesley, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things
to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s." The church of
the future must be the church of Christ, claiming all the mighty leaders whom he
has raised up from the beginning, as its servants for Christ’s sake. It must be
formed, not by a compromise nor by elimination, but by coalition and
comprehension and accumulation, until we shall have a body as self-sacrificing
as the best Romanist; as pious as the best Presbyterian, as enthusiastic as the
best Methodist, as loyal as the best Baptist, as missionary as the best
Moravian, as free as the best Congregationalist.

Since the inception of this movement many other powerful forces have been making
for union within the Church of Christ. Chief of all and all pervasive is the
mighty missionary revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Strongly
tributary to the general current are the Young Men’s Christian Association, the
Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, the Student Volunteer Movement and
the Laymen’s Missionary Movement, and especially the Federal Council of Churches
of Christ in America. The division of God’s people has become economically,
socially and spiritually intolerable. Whatever and whoever assists in bringing
about the speedy answer to the Lord’s Prayer "that they may all be one," and the
end of which this is the condition, the universal Christianization of the world,
is a friend of his race as well as a servant of his Lord. A Modern Crusade. The
fourth aspect of the current reformation is its intense evangelistic and
missionary spirit and passion. Its pioneers "went everywhere preaching the
gospel," without money and without price. Practically they restored the first
century conditions and revived the ministry of all members, the priesthood of
all believers. Lawyers and doctors, mechanics and farmers, merchants and
teachers carried their New Testaments in their pockets and sought wherever they
went to lead men to Christ. All the missionary, educational and benevolent
activities of the Disciples have grown out of this primary passion. The plea is
the gospel.

Colleges have been established, beginning with Bacon College at Georgetown, Ky.,
now Transylvania University at Lexington, in 1836, and Bethany College in
Western Virginia, in 1840, which, on account of Alexander Campbell being its
president, has generally been accounted the mother of all our schools. Today
there are over thirty of these institutions of higher learning with an aggregate
property valuation of $5,516,214, a total endowment of $3,620,400, aggregate
number of instructors 592, and a total student body of 7,054, of whom 1,200 are
preparing for the ministry. The churches of the several states and sections are
organized into missionary co-operations to the number of forty-six, with an
aggregate annual income of $208,507. In 1849 the American Christian Missionary
Society was organized with Alexander Campbell as its president. It has
established 4,046 churches, brought 212,751 new converts into their fellowship,
and raised and expended a total of $2,646,263. It is chartered under the laws of
Ohio and has its office in Cincinnati. One of its chief functions is the
leadership of Sunday-school activities through an American Bible-school
superintendent. The Christian Woman’s Board of Missions has its headquarters in
its own College of Missions Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind. It was organized in 1874,
and had in 1915, 3,470 auxiliaries and 90,090 members, with an income of
$373,582. Its work is about equally divided between the home and foreign fields:
United States, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, India, China, Mexico, Porto Rico,
South America and Africa. The Foreign Christian Missionary Society was organized
in 1875 and is now preaching the gospel in England, Scandinavia, Cuba, the
Philippine Islands, Japan, China, Tibet, India and Africa. Its missionaries
number 181 with 805 native evangelists. Their work is evangelistic, educational,
medical, literary and benevolent. Its receipts of $464,149, in 1914, came from
3,187 churches, 4,100 Sunday-schools and 1,598 individuals. The total receipts
from the first have amounted to $5,738,196. The Board of Church Extension, of
Kansas City, Mo., has accumulated since its organization in 1888, a fund of over
a million of dollars, which is loaned to churches to enable them to build and is
repaid with interest in five equal annual installments. The board has aided
1,776 churches; 1,100 of which have paid back their loans in full; thus bringing
the total of all loans to $2,841,097.

Through the zealous interest and generous gifts of A. M. Atkinson, the Board of
Ministerial Relief was constituted in 1895. Its new receipts for 1915 were
$39,729. Eighty-two aged and disabled preachers and fifty-one widows were
helped. The permanent fund is about $80,000. The National Benevolent Association
of the Christian Church was organized in 1886 in St. Louis. Its institutions are
six Orphans’ Homes, in St. Louis, Cleveland, Dallas, Texas, Atlanta, Ga.,
Denver, Colo., and Omaha, Neb.; four Homes for the Aged, in Jacksonville, Ill.,
East Aurora, N. Y., Walla Walla, Wash., and Dallas, Tex.; the Christian
Hospital, Valparaiso, Ind. Under its auspices a great Christian Hospital has
been erected in Kansas City. The regular receipts for 1915 were $135,602. The
Men and Millions Movement is a united effort of these organizations, in a
five-year campaign, to enlist 1,000 new missionaries, promote the Every-Member
Canvass in all the churches and secure $6,000,000 in direct gifts of $500 or
more.

American Temperance Board of the Churches of Christ centers in Indianapolis,
Ind.

Commission on Christian Union was organized in 1910, with Peter Ainslie of
Baltimore, Md., Chairman. It issues {The Christian Union Quarterly.} The
National Board of Christian Endeavor for the Disciples of Christ is represented
by its superintendent, Claude E. Hill, of Valparaiso, Ind.

Christian Board of Publication grew out of the investigations and report of a
committee of twenty-five appointed at the National Convention of 1907, and the
gift of $350,000 by one of the members of that committee, part to purchase the
Christian Publishing Company, the rest to enlarge its equipment and extend its
service. It is administered by thirteen unpaid directors. All profits not needed
in the development of the publishing house must be distributed to the
missionary, benevolent and educational organizations of the Disciples of Christ.
It publishes most of the books of the Restoration movement, including Alexander
Campbell’s works and innumerable tracts: {The Christian-Evangelist,} a weekly
journal of wide influence, and complete series of Bible-School Helps, both
uniform and graded. It furnishes, also, all sorts of church and school supplies
and the books of all publishers.

All of the above organizations participate in a great annual convention, which,
at the Centennial celebration, Pittsburgh, 1909, recorded an attendance of
40,000 with 30,000 sitting together at the Lord’s Supper. They are supported by
the voluntary offerings of churches, Sunday-schools and Christian Endeavor
Societies, and by individual gifts, both direct and on the annuity plan, and by
bequests.

Some 2,000 churches, with 150,000 members, mostly in the South, refuse to
affiliate with any sort of an organization or to use musical instruments in
their worship. At the request of their leaders they are listed separately in the
United States census and not included in the Year Book, which is published by
the American Christian Missionary Society.

There are two groups of churches in Great Britain, distinguished principally by
the more conservative brethren having no salaried ministers, debarring the
unimmersed from communion and soliciting no funds outside of their membership.
In Australia the churches of Christ are especially well organized, devout in
their life and earnest in their evangelistic efforts.

Probably the most devoted and zealous Christians on the globe are the native
Africans of the F. C. M. Society’s station in the Belgian Congo. In sixteen
years the membership has grown to 3,736. Every tenth person is supported by the
nine as a missionary to the tribes that are still ignorant of the gospel. In
addition to tithing their incomes of eight cents a day, for this purpose, they
make large, annual free will offerings.

Until recently the Disciples have been a rural people. Healthy progress is now
being made in metropolitan centers.

It is noteworthy that, in spite of their receiving practically no additions by
immigration, the Disciples have a higher rate of increase than any other
Protestant body in America, and now rank fifth in numerical strength. The ratio
of male to female members exceeds that of any other Protestant people except the
Lutherans, being 41 ½ to 58½, while the general Protestant ratio is 40 to 60. In
the Christian Endeavor movement the Disciples early took high rank. Nearly all
congregations have societies. Their aggregate membership and their activity rank
them as one of the two or three strongest bodies in the international movement.
The modern Sunday-school revival found early and generous response. In the
grading of schools, organization of adult classes, training of teachers and
growth of attendance, the Disciples stand among the first. In 1909 a special
Front Rank Standard was formulated. At each annual state convention banners are
awarded the schools that have attained its six points of excellence. To December
25, 1911, the International Association had issued Certificates of Recognition
to 26,767 adult classes, with 641,246 members. The Disciples (Christians) are
credited with 6,643 classes and 150,709 members, leading all the other religious
bodies. Methodist Episcopal schools come second with 5,782 classes and 146,167
members, and the Presbyterians third, with 2,234 classes and 52,015 members.

Until long after Mr. Campbell’s death it was freely predicted that, having
neither creed nor governing body, the movement which he had led would soon
disintegrate. On the contrary, it alone came unbroken through the Civil War,
passed through the reconstruction period introduced by modern science without a
heresy trial and is to-day distinguished by a harmony of teaching and solidarity
of life that amazes the student of current religious affairs. The fundamental
principles of liberty in the truth, loyalty to Christ and unity in service are
cherished more fondly with each passing year. Three patent distinctions are
found, not strangely, to characterize the Disciples wherever they are met:
Enthusiastic support of civic, moral and political reforms, intense and fruitful
evangelism and hearty sociability. They are the most American of Americans, the
most Protestant of Protestants; and humbly aspire to be the most Christian of
Christians.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/doctrinal-helps/
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