The Miscellaneous Works...

THE language of prophecy leads us to hope for more than the salva. tion of a certain number of individuals through the gospel. It speaks of a general restoration, so complete as to repair altogether the mischief which had been introduced into the world by sin. And the language of St. Paul, when declaring the great mystery of his preaching, namely, the admission of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God, seems also to go beyond the redemption of a few individuals, comparatively speaking, out of the multitude of all nations. Christ was to present unto himself a Church holy and without blemish; and the distinction made by some between the visible and invisible Church, seems only a later refinement of interpretation, suggested by the fact that the Church in the obvious sense of the term, was not pure and spotless. Now ought we to lower the language of prophecy, in order to make it agree with the existing state of things? or to be anxious to amend the existing state of things, for the very reason that it does not correspond with the promises of Scripture?

The spread of Christianity, speaking of the geographical extent of its mere nominal dominion, has been partial;-its real moral effects have been still more partial. The largest part of the world does not acknowledge Christ so much as in name; and where he is acknow ledged in name, he is yet denied in many instances in works. The perfect work of the Gospel has been seen only in individuals: Christ has laid his hands on a few sick folk and healed them; but he has done no mighty work of spiritual healing on a whole church. It is still most true, that we see not yet all things put under him.

Now are we prepared to say that, whereas the world was lost by one man's sin, it was only to be in a small part recovered by one man's righteousness?-that, whereas through Adam all died, only a very small number were through Christ to be made alive? This is directly contrary to the language of Scripture, which represents the redemption as designed to be a full reparation of the evil occasioned by the fall. Or are we prepared to say that God's purposes have been defeated by the greater power of God's enemy ?-that sin has been stronger

than grace, Satan mightier than Christ?-that the Church with its divine Head and its indwelling Spirit has been unable to overcome the powers of evil?-that the medicine was too weak to overcome the disease?

If neither of these alternatives be true; if the Scripture will not allow us to doubt of God's gracious will towards us all; and if to doubt his power be blasphemy,-what remains, but that we have weakened and corrupted that medicine, which was in itself sufficient to heal us? —that we have not tried, and are not trying Christianity, such as Christ willed it to be?-that the Church, against which the powers of hell have so long maintained an advantageous conflict, cannot be that same Church against which Christ declared that they should not prevail ?

Now here it is necessary, in order to prevent much confusion and very much uncharitableness, to distinguish. carefully between what I may be allowed to call Christian religion and the Christian Church. See Serm. xxxix. in vol iv.; Lect. on Modern Hist. vi.

By Christian religion, I mean that knowledge of God and of Christ, and that communion of the Holy Spirit, by which an individual is led through life, in all holiness, and dies with the confident hope of rising again through Christ at the last day. This knowledge being derived, or derivable at any rate, from the Scriptures alone, and this communion being the answer to our earnest prayers, it is perfectly possible that Christian religion may work its full work on an individual living alone, or living amongst unbelieving or ungodly men,-that here, where the business rests only with God and the individual soul, God's glory may be exalted and the man's salvation effected, whatever may be the state of the Church at large.

But, by the Christian Church, I mean that provision for the commu nicating, maintaining, and enforcing of this knowledge by which it was to be made influential, not on individuals, but on masses of men. This provision consisted in the formation of a society, which by its constitution should be capable of acting both within itself and without; having, so to speak, a twofold movement, the one for its outard ad. vance, the other for its inward life and purification; so that Christi. anity should be at once spread widely, and preserved the while in its proper truth and vigour, till Christian knowledge should be not only communicated to the whole world, but be embraced also in its original purity, and bring forth its practical fruit. Thus Christian religion and the Christian Church being two distinct things, the one acting upon individuals, the other upon masses; it is very possible for the former to continue to do its work, although the latter be perverted or disabled.

But then the consequence will be such as we see before us, that Christianity, being designed to remedy the intensity of the evil of the fall by its religion, and the universality of the evil by its Church, has succeeded in the first, because its religion has been retained as God gave it, but has failed in the second, because its Church has been greatly corrupted.

Christianity, then, contains on the one hand a divine philosophy, which we may call its religion, and a divine polity which is its Church. But it is precisely from an acknowledgment of this last truth, accompanied with a misunderstanding of its real nature, that the greatest part of the actual mischief has arisen. When we say, therefore, that Christianity contains a divine polity, namely its Church, it is of the utmost importance that we have a clear notion of the Christian Church, according to what we may gather from the Scripture to have been the mind of its divine Founder.

Now, that religion should be a social as well as an individual concern, is nothing peculiar to Christianity, if by religion we mean the outward and visible worship of God. The act of sacrifice, almost of necessity, involves the cooperation of more than a single person; festivals and solemn processions, even hymns of thanksgiving and praise, can scarcely be performed by one alone. Religion, then, in that sense in which the ancient world generally understood it, that is, public and visible worship, has always been, and must always be, the business of several persons together;—the religion of a single individual must, in this sense, be something imperfect, and only in a very small degree possible.

But the peculiarity of Christianity consists in this, that while it takes religion in another sense, and means by it not the visible wor ship of God, but the service of the heart towards him; and whilst it would thus appear that religion could exist perfectly in one single individual, and required no cooperation of more persons, yet still it is made the business of a number or multitude, and our spiritual relations to God are represented as matters of a joint interest, no less than that visible worship which, in its very nature, must be more than individual.

Now it is seen and generally acknowledged, that men's physical welfare has been greatly promoted by the cooperation of a number of persons endowed with unlike powers and resources. One man having what another wants, and wanting what another has, there is an obvious wisdom in so combining their efforts, as that the strength of one should supply the weakness of another, and so the weakness should in no case be perceptible.

This cooperative principle, founded on the great dissimilarity which prevails amongst men, was by Christianity to be applied to moral purposes, as it had long been to physical; (See Introduction to Sermons on Christian Life, its Course, its Hindrances, and its Helps, p. 48;) each man was to regard his intellectual and moral gifts as a means of advancing the intellectual and moral good of society; what he himself wanted was to be supplied out of the abundance of his neighbour; and thus the moral no less than the physical weaknesses of each individual, were to be strengthened and remedied, till they should vanish as to their enfeebling effects both with respect to himself and to the community.

Nothing could be more general than such a system of co-operation. It extended to every part of life; not only going far beyond that cooperation for ritual purposes, which was the social part of the old religions, but, so far as men's physical well-being had been the sole object of existing civil societes, it went far beyond them also. For though it is possible, and unhappily too easy, to exclude moral considerations from our notions of physical good, and from our notions of ritual religion, yet it is not easy, in looking to the moral good of man, to exclude considerations of his physical well-being. Every outward thing having a tendency to affect his moral character, either for the better or for the worse, and this especially holding good with respect to riches or poverty, economical questions, in all their wide extent, fall directly under the cognizance of those whose object is to promote man's moral welfare.

But while thus general, the object of Christian cooperation was not to be vague. When men combined to offer sacrifice, or to keep festival, there was a definite object of their union; but the promotion of man's moral welfare might seem indistinct and lost in distance. Something nearer and more personal was therefore to be mixed up with that which was indistinct from its very vastness. The direct object of Christian cooperation was to bring Christ into every part of common life; in scriptural language, to make human society one living body, closely joined in communion with Christ, its head. And for this purpose, one of the very simplest acts of natural necessity was connected with the very deepest things of religion :—the meal of an assembly of Christians was made the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. And the early church well entered into the spirit of this ordinance, when it began every day by a partaking of the holy communion. For when Christ was thus brought into one of the commonest acts of nature and of common society, it was a lively lesson, that in every other act through the day, he should be made present also: if Christians at

« Föregående Fortsätt »

Böcker