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Thoughts On The Church

Thoughts On The Church image
Parent Issue
Day
11
Month
October
Year
1878
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The church (lifters from religión. All ! men hold to a religión, but not all know of or believe in a chnreh. A church is the religieus sentiment organized into a brotherhood; and henee the term religión is mucli broader than the term church - the latter being one of the forms assumed by the former. The ! Christian church ia the Christian j ment organized into a brotherhood, and l this term is, therefore, much narrower than the Christian religión - the religión carrying its blessings often to many outside the lines of the formal brotherhood. The Christian church comes to us as an assemblage of ideas grotiped together to become a foundation of a society. Philosophy comes to us as an assemblage of ideas but not with any society annexed. From Spinoza or from Baoos or from Locke carne a group of thoughts fastened together, in a chain more or loss I strong, by the coimeeting links of reason, but uo socieiy of any kind is founded upon any one of these forms of thought. The church is, therefore, not a philosophy alone, but a philosophy and a society, just as a republie is not liberty alone but liberty organized into a state j for the purpose of progress, happiness, and defense. Let us think of the church in its two aspects ; as a group of ideas and then as an organism. What ideas form this group? As Christ formedtheir organisin,He willfurnish the most perfect answor. We j must study Him and fiad what propositions He gathered up from the v.'ide field of moráis and worship, and melted j gether for the f ormation of this new substance. When our fathers were hanging I over the crucible in which they were ! hoping to fashion a new metal called America, they let fall into it, one by one, the elements of right of life, riekt of property, right of conscience, right of happiness, right to make the laws which j should secure these forms of good. Other substanties they flung into the vessel from day to day, and af ter the caldron had boiied and bubbled for seven years out was poured tlint political gold which we cali America. To ftnd what ingredients were poured into the cup where the church was making, we must watch the hand of Christ, for He stood by at this formation, and was the Supremo Leader of the mystery. The Mosaic age had indeed gone before Him iu its long inquiry, but that age was related to Christ much like the alchemists were related tu real science. There was bóiling and bubbling, but wken the pot was turned over not much pure gold ran out. The elements or substanees which Christ combined must be confessed by two kinds : the primary and the secondary in the scale of importanee. The primary elements wre righteousness, faifh, love of the Founder as aRedoeniov, and of God, and devotion to man's weitere ; the secondary elements were form of church government, baptism, and the Lord's supper. Either i from His oto lips or from those of His companions these few ideas are seen being mingled for the composition of the ecclesia. This separation of primary from secondary ideas is to be founded not simply upon man's reason but upon , Christ's conduct, for He made very j prominent these notions which I have called primary ; He passed by with but little remark the ideas which I have called secondary. The church, then, is an organism founded on the , ment within and without of the notions dear to Christ, founded to secure to its members the prize of a pure religión, and to convey to others a knowledge of this prize and to awaken in other hearts a zeal iu its pursuit. You eau perceive ! at once that a society organized for the pursuit of science, or for explorations in j remote lands, or for making collections : in art or in literatura falls far bolow a , society whose purposes are a faifa ín God, the culture of righteousness, the imitation of Christ and the persuasión of others to accept of this higher life. We must also measure a moral work or act of philosophy by its inherent truth. As we. valué a picture by its j subject, and rank a Madonna or a nerva higher than we rank an animal piece, or a study of feature or limb, becanse of the difference of subject, and as we place an aria above a light waltz, because the aria awakens a higher sentiment, so we must judge of a social organism by its cardinal theme ; and out of this method of judgment the church will come the noblest organization known to man or even possible to man. It is founded upon the largest thoughts and actions of which man can couceive. To advance one's own righteousness and hat of one's neighbor, and to love and serve God and follow closely Jesus Christ, is to amass together ideas as the Egyptians amassed stones forapyramid. So immense were some of the stones in the great pyramid of Gizeli that to drag ono of them from the quarry to its place took 2,000 men three years. We think of earth's greatest works when we try to measure the truths that make up the Christian church, and feel that to drag üiem out of their quarry and lócate them in the walls of a beautiful temple would have taken many thousands of men many centuries. Such a grouping of majestic principies was the work of a Jesús Christ. It must follow from this evident composition and purpose of this prince of all societies that an age or an individual does it a great wrong when that age or that person assumes that the church is an arena of debate or a compendium of profound philosophy. lts simple purpose, uprightness, faith in God and in Christ, and the conversión of the world from darkness and sin, should evidently stand forth in the most' possible of simplicity. In the complex streets of a city a stranger may easily become bewildered and lost. Men led to the inner room of the labyrinth and there get iïeo coukl not find the sunlight again. Tlioy would grope aud die within tho.se pitiless windings. 'ín some'of tho past centurias religión became so complicated with metitphysical inquiry tbat few minds any longer grasped it.s prime objects, and for hundreds of years the church did not so mnch win wicked men to goodness as put to death men who thought whatit called false doctrine. Instead of being a missionary to the wicked, it put to death millions of its own family. It is tho glory of our day that the clmrch is returning to its simple purpose, and is seeking to make men pions and good rather than to train them up as masters of debate and infinitesimal discrimination. If you will read after Christ and his immediate compauions, and read for a certain pnrpose, namely, to get exact notions from one or all of them, you will soon find that you have repaired to the wrong books or wrong persons. To find your want you will be compelled to go to men who wrote many eenturies later. In composing His church, Christ followed the law of all the greatest and wisest ; namely, the law of the widest possible of principies. The many generatiorrs of thought and exjjerience have taught mankind this, that the spiritual import of a proposition will harmonize a vast'multitude who would be torn in fragments by the letter. Paul saw this when he said : " The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life." What a few men then knew or dreamed of whole ages now know, for the fields of Europe are red with the blood of those whom the letter destroyed. In the spirit of Christianity the Catholics and Protestants were friends, but, in the letter of it, they were enemies. Out of the spirit of doctrine Europe and England might have risen in a grand unity of life, of I art, of labor, of language, of friendship, but, by the letter, the land was kapt wet with fraternal blood. The ideas of the Christian church are, therefore, seen in its origin only in the outlines of the spirit and not in the exactness of a letter, that there may be room for all, a oneness possible and easy for a thousand sects. The legal inind, sitting upon the bench of justice, learned, many generations ago, that equity must never be injured by a want of form. Great matters must not be the slave of small matters. Kight must not be put at tlie mercy of a sy Hable, a word, a ter. The meaning of which principie is that man must be governed by general truths rather than by exact forms. Christ was a forerunner of common human greatness, and he poured into the j crucible, wliere His church was formed, ; the grand outlines of His holy i ism. He so dcfined "faith" that no , good man can escape it, and no bad man can possess it. An Abraham found it in a wilderness ; a Magdalen found it ; in her perfect simplicity ; a John found it in his deep wisdom ; but, amid quent definitions of saying faith, neither Abraham, or Magdalen, or St. John could have escaped the most cruel j ure and death. The only object of faitli was to secure piety and righteousness, and henee Christ ieft it to be an attachment to the Creator, and not a skill amid forms of thought. Subseqtient definitions of faith separate the hcarts which the original idea would have made perpetual friends. Men born I brothers in the spirit tore each other in the letter like wild beasts. All through tho primary doctrines this comprehensiveness prevails, so that, if any mind desires an exact form of gospel truth, he must pass by the New Testament group and Beek his prize from those eenturies which made precisión an ossential, and a variation a capital offense.

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Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus