I. Sanctification…

I. Sanctification

1. Definition of Sanctification.

Sanctification is that continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the holy disposition imparted in regeneration is maintained and strengthened.

Godet: “The work of Jesus in the world is twofold. It is a work accomplished for us, destined to effect reconciliation between God and man; it is a work accomplished in us, with the object of effecting our sanctification. By the one, a right relation is established between God and us; by the other, the fruit of the reëstablished order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received into the state of grace; by the latter, the pardoned sinner is associated with the life of God.... How many express themselves as if, when forgiveness with the peace which it procures has been once obtained, all is finished and the work of salvation is complete! They seem to have no suspicion that salvation consists in the health of the soul, and that the health of the soul consists in holiness. Forgiveness is not the reëstablishment of health; it is the crisis of convalescence. If God thinks fit to declare the sinner righteous, it is in order that he may by that means restore him to holiness.” O. P. Gifford: “The steamship whose machinery is broken may be brought into port and made fast to the dock. She is safe, but not sound. Repairs may last a long time. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first—safety; sanctification gives the second—soundness.”

Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 220—“To be conscious that one is forgiven, and yet that at the same time he is so polluted that he cannot beget a child without handing on to that child a nature which will be as bad as if his father had never been forgiven, is not salvation in any real sense.” We would say: Is not salvation in any complete sense. Justification needs sanctification to follow it. Man needs God to continue and preserve his spiritual life, just as much as he needed God to begin it at the first. Creation in the spiritual, as well as in the natural world, needs to be supplemented by preservation; see quotation from Jonathan Edwards, in Allen’s biography of him, 371.

Regeneration is instantaneous, but sanctification takes time. The “developing” of the photographer’s picture may illustrate God’s process of sanctifying the regenerate soul. But it is development by new access of truth or light, while the photographer’s picture is usually developed in the dark. This development cannot be accomplished in a moment. “We try in our religious lives to practise instantaneous photography. One minute for prayer will give us a vision of God, and we think that is enough. Our pictures are poor because our negatives are weak. We do not give God a long enough sitting to get a good likeness.”

Salvation is something past, something present, and something future; a past fact, justification; a present process, sanctification; a future consummation, redemption and glory. David, in Ps. 51:1, 2, prays not only that God will blot out his transgressions (justification), but that God will wash him thoroughly from his iniquity (sanctification). E. G. Robinson: “Sanctification consists negatively, in the removal of the penal consequences of sin from the moral nature; positively, in the progressive implanting and growth of a new principle of life.... The Christian church is a succession of copies of the character of Christ. Paul never says: ‘be ye imitators of me’ (1 Cor. 4:16), except when writing to those who had no copies of the New Testament or of the Gospels.”

Clarke, Christian Theology, 366—“Sanctification does not mean perfection reached, but the progress of the divine life toward perfection. Sanctification is the Christianizing of the Christian.” It is not simply deliverance from the penalty of sin, but the development of a divine life that conquers sin. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 343—“Any man who thinks he is a Christian, and that he has accepted Christ for justification, when he did not at the same time accept him for sanctification, is miserably deluded in that very experience.”

This definition implies:

(a) That, although in regeneration the governing disposition of the soul is made holy, there still remain tendencies to evil which are unsubdued.

John 13:10—“He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit [i. e., as a whole]”; Rom. 6:12—“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof”—sin dwells in a believer, but it reigns in an unbeliever (C. H. M.). Subordinate volitions in the Christian are not always determined in character by the fundamental choice; eddies in the stream sometimes run counter to the general course of the current.

This doctrine is the opposite of that expressed in the phrase: “the essential divinity of the human.” Not culture, but crucifixion, is what the Holy Spirit prescribes for the natural man. There are two natures in the Christian, as Paul shows in Romans 7. The one flourishes at the other’s expense. The vine dresser has to cut the rank shoots from self, that all our force may be thrown into growing fruit. Deadwood must be cut out; living wood must be cut back (John 15:2). Sanctification is not a matter of course, which will go on whatever we do, or do not do. It requires a direct superintendence and surgery on the one hand, and, on the other hand a practical hatred of evil on our part that coöperates with the husbandry of God.

(b) That the existence in the believer of these two opposing principles gives rise to a conflict which lasts through life.

Gal. 5:17—“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would”—not, as the A. V. had it, “so that ye cannot do the things that ye would”; the Spirit who dwells in believers is represented as enabling them successfully to resist those tendencies to evil which naturally exist within them; James 4:5 (the marginal and better reading)—“That spirit which he made to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto jealous envy”—i. e., God’s love, like all true love, longs to have its objects wholly for its own. The Christian is two men in one; but he is to “put away the old man” and “put on the new man” (Eph. 4:22, 23). Compare Ecclesiasticus 2:1—“My son, if thou dost set out to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation.”

1 Tim. 6:12—“fight the good fight of the faith”—ἀγωνίζου τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα τῆς πίστεως = the beautiful, honorable, glorious fight; since it has a noble helper, incentive, and reward. It is the commonest of all struggles, but the issue determines our destiny. An Indian received as a gift some tobacco in which he found a half dollar hidden. He brought it back next day, saying that good Indian had fought all night with bad Indian, one telling him to keep, the other telling him to return.

(c) That in this conflict the Holy Spirit enables the Christian, through increasing faith, more fully and consciously to appropriate Christ, and thus progressively to make conquest of the remaining sinfulness of his nature.

Rom. 8:13, 14—“for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”; 1 Cor. 6:11—“but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God”; James 1:26—“If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man’s religion is vain”—see Com. of Neander, in loco—“That religion is merely imaginary, seeming, unreal, which allows the continuance of the moral defects originally predominant in the character.” The Christian is “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20); but the crucified man does not die at once. Yet he is as good as dead. Even after the old man is crucified we are still to mortify him, or put him to death (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5). We are to cut down the old rosebush and cultivate only the new shoot that is grafted into it. Here is our probation as Christians. So “die Scene wird zum Tribunal”—the play of life becomes God’s judgment.

Dr. Hastings: “When Bourdaloue was probing the conscience of Louis XIV, applying to him the words of St. Paul and intending to paraphrase them: ‘For the good which I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do,’ ‘I find two men in me’—the King interrupted the great preacher with the memorable exclamation: ‘Ah, these two men, I know them well!’ Bourdaloue answered: ‘It is already something to know them, Sire; but it is not enough,—one of the two must perish.’ ” And, in the genuine believer, the old does little by little die, and the new takes its place, as “David waxed stronger and stronger, but the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker” (2 Sam. 3:1). As the Welsh minister found himself after awhile thinking and dreaming in English, so the language of Canaan becomes to the Christian his native and only speech.

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2. Explanations and Scripture Proof

(a) Sanctification is the work of God.

1 Thess. 5:23—“And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.” Much of our modern literature ignores man’s dependence upon God, and some of it seems distinctly intended to teach the opposite doctrine. Auerbach’s “On the Heights,” for example, teaches that man can make his own atonement; and “The Villa on the Rhine,” by the same author, teaches that man can sanctify himself. The proper inscription for many modern French novels is: “Entertainment here for man and beast.” The Tendenznovelle of Germany has its imitators in the sceptical novels of England. And no doctrine in these novels is so common as the doctrine that man needs no Savior but himself.

(b) It is a continuous process.

Phil. 1:6—“being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ”; 3:15—“Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you”; Col. 3:9, 10—“lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him”; cf. Acts 2:47—“those that were being saved”; 1 Cor. 1:18—“unto us who are being saved”; 2 Cor. 2:15—“in them that are being saved”; 1 Thess. 2:12—“God, who calleth you into his own kingdom and glory.”

C. H. Parkhurst: “The yeast does not strike through the whole lump of dough at a flash. We keep finding unsuspected lumps of meal that the yeast has not yet seized upon. We surrender to God in instalments. We may not mean to do it, but we do it. Conversion has got to be brought down to date.” A student asked the President of Oberlin College whether he could not take a shorter course than the one prescribed. “Oh yes,” replied the President, “but then it depends on what you want to make of yourself. When God wants to make an oak, he takes a hundred years, but when he wants to make a squash, he takes six months.”

(c) It is distinguished from regeneration as growth from birth, or as the strengthening of a holy disposition from the original impartation of it.

Eph. 4:15—“speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ”; 1 Thess. 3:12—“the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men”; 2 Pet. 3:18—“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”; cf. 1 Pet. 1:23—“begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth”; 1 John 3:9—“Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.” Not sin only, but holiness also, is a germ whose nature is to grow. The new love in the believer’s heart follows the law of all life, in developing and extending itself under God’s husbandry. George Eliot: “The reward of one duty done is the power to do another.” J. W. A. Stewart: “When the 21st of March has come, we say ‘The back of the winter is broken.’ There will still be alternations of frost, but the progress will be towards heat. The coming of summer is sure,—in germ the summer is already here.” Regeneration is the crisis of a disease; sanctification is the progress of convalescence.

Yet growth is not a uniform thing in the tree or in the Christian. In some single months there is more growth than in all the year besides. During the rest of the year, however, there is solidification, without which the green timber would be useless. The period of rapid growth, when woody fibre is actually deposited between the bark and the trunk, occupies but four to six weeks in May, June, and July. 2 Pet. 1:5—“adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge”—adding to the central grace all those that are complementary and subordinate, till they attain the harmony of a chorus (ἐπιχορηγήσατε).

(d) The operation of God reveals itself in, and is accompanied by, intelligent and voluntary activity of the believer in the discovery and mortification of sinful desires, and in the bringing of the whole being into obedience to Christ and conformity to the standards of his word.

John 17:17—“Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth”; 2 Cor. 10:5—“casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”; Phil. 2:12, 13—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”; 1 Pet. 2:2—“as new‐born babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.” John 15:3—“Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.” Regeneration through the word is followed by sanctification through the word. Eph. 5:1—“Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children.” Imitation is at first a painful effort of will, as in learning the piano; afterwards it becomes pleasurable and even unconscious. Children unconsciously imitate the handwriting of their parents. Charles Lamb sees in the mirror, as he is shaving, the apparition of his dead father. So our likeness to God comes out as we advance in years. Col. 3:4—“When Christ who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.”

Horace Bushnell said that, if the stars did not move, they would rot in the sky. The man who rides the bicycle must either go on, or go off. A large part of sanctification consists in the formation of proper habits, such as the habit of Scripture reading, of secret prayer, of church going, of efforts to convert and benefit others. Baxter: “Every man must grow, as trees grow, downward and upward at once. The visible outward growth must be accompanied by an invisible inward growth.” Drummond: “The spiritual man having passed from death to life, the natural man must pass from life to death.” There must be increasing sense of sin: “My sins gave sharpness to the nails, And pointed every thorn.” There must be a bringing of new and yet newer regions of thought, feeling, and action, under the sway of Christ and his truth. There is a grain of truth even in Macaulay’s jest about “essentially Christian cookery.”

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 63, 109‐111—“The church is Christian no more than as it is the organ of the continuous passion of Christ. We must suffer with sinning and lost humanity, and so ‘fill up ... that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ’ (Col. 1:24). Christ’s crucifixion must be prolonged side by side with his resurrection. There are three deaths: 1. death in sin, our natural condition; 2. death for sin, our judicial condition; 3. death to sin, our sanctified condition.... As the ascending sap in the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite of storm and frost cling to the branches all the winter long, so does the Holy Spirit within us, when allowed full sway, subdue and expel the remnants of our sinful nature.”

(e) The agency through which God effects the sanctification of the believer is the indwelling Spirit of Christ.

John 14:17, 18—“the Spirit of truth ... he abideth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate; I come unto you”; 15:3‐5—“Already ye are clean.... Abide in me ... apart from me ye can do nothing”; Rom. 8:9, 10—“the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”; 1 Cor. 1:2, 30—“sanctified in Christ Jesus ... Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... sanctification”; 6:19—“know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?” Gal. 5:16—“Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”; Eph. 5:18—“And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit”; Col. 1:27‐29—“the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ; whereunto I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily”; 2 Tim. 1:14—“That good thing which was committed unto thee guard through the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us.”

Christianity substitutes for the old sources of excitement the power of the Holy Spirit. Here is a source of comfort, energy, and joy, infinitely superior to any which the sinner knows. God does not leave the soul to fall back upon itself. The higher up we get in the scale of being, the more does the new life need nursing and tending,—compare the sapling and the babe. God gives to the Christian, therefore, an abiding presence and work of the Holy Spirit,—not only regeneration, but sanctification. C. E. Smith, Baptism of Fire: “The soul needs the latter as well as the former rain, the sealing as well as the renewing of the Spirit, the baptism of fire as well as the baptism of water. Sealing gives something additional to the document, an evidence plainer than the writing within, both to one’s self and to others.”

“Few flowers yield more honey than serves the bee for its daily food.” So we must first live ourselves off from our spiritual diet; only what is over can be given to nourish others. Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ: “Have peace in thine own heart; else thou wilt never be able to communicate peace to others.” Godet: “Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a vessel which must be enlarged in proportion as it is filled, and filled in proportion as it is enlarged.” Matthew Arnold, Morality: “We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides; The Spirit bloweth and is still; In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled. With aching hands and bleeding feet, We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish ’t were done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.”

(f) The mediate or instrumental cause of sanctification, as of justification, is faith.

Acts 15:9—“cleansing their hearts by faith”; Rom. 1:17—“For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live from faith.” The righteousness includes sanctification as well as justification; and the subject of the epistle to the Romans is not simply justification by faith, but rather righteousness by faith, or salvation by faith. Justification by faith is the subject of chapters 1‐7; sanctification by faith is the subject of chapters 8‐16. We are not sanctified by efforts of our own, any more than we are justified by efforts of our own.

God does not share with us the glory of sanctification, any more than he shares with us the glory of justification. He must do all, or nothing. William Law: “A root set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all that sun and air and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way of its growth to perfection, as every man may be whose spirit aspires after all that which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun meets not the springing bud that stretches toward him with half that certainty as God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.”

(g) The object of this faith is Christ himself, as the head of a new humanity and the source of truth and life to those united to him.

2 Cor. 3:18—“we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit”; Eph. 4:13—“till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Faith here is of course much more than intellectual faith,—it is the reception of Christ himself. As Christianity furnishes a new source of life and energy—in the Holy Spirit: so it gives a new object of attention and regard—the Lord Jesus Christ. As we get air out of a vessel by pouring in water, so we can drive sin out only by bringing Christ in. See Chalmers’ Sermon on The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World, 123‐140—“Man does not grow by making efforts to grow, but by putting himself into the conditions of growth by living in Christ.”

1 John 3:3—“every one that hath this hope set on him (ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ) purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” Sanctification does not begin from within. The objective Savior must come first. The hope based on him must give the motive and the standard of self‐purification. Likeness comes from liking. We grow to be like that which we like. Hence we use the phrase “I like,” as a synonym for “I love.” We cannot remove frost from our window by rubbing the pane; we need to kindle a fire. Growth is not the product of effort, but of life. “Taking thought,” or “being anxious” (Mat. 6:27), is not the way to grow. Only take the hindrances out of the way, and we grow without care, as the tree does. The moon makes no effort to shine, nor has it any power of its own to shine. It is only a burnt out cinder in the sky. It shines only as it reflects the light of the sun. So we can shine “as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15), only as we reflect Christ, who is “the Sun of Righteousness” (Mal. 4:2) and “the Light of the world” (John 8:12).

(h) Though the weakest faith perfectly justifies, the degree of sanctification is measured by the strength of the Christian’s faith, and the persistence with which he apprehends Christ in the various relations which the Scriptures declare him to sustain to us.

Mat. 9:29—“According to your faith be it done unto you”; Luke 17:5—“Lord, increase our faith”; Rom. 12:2—“be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”; 13:14—“But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof”; Eph. 4:24—“put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth”; 1 Tim. 4:7—“exercise thyself unto godliness.” Leighton: “None of the children of God are born dumb.” Milton: “Good, the more communicated, the more abundant grows.” Faith can neither be stationary nor complete (Westcott, Bible Com. on John 15:8—“so shall ye become my disciples”). Luther: “He who is a Christian is no Christian”; “Christianus non in esse, sed in fieri.” In a Bible that belonged to Oliver Cromwell is this inscription: “O. C. 1644. Qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus”—“He who ceases to be better ceases to be good.” Story, the sculptor, when asked which of his works he valued most, replied: “My next.” The greatest work of the Holy Spirit is the perfecting of Christian character.

Col. 1:10—“Increasing by the knowledge of God”—here the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant (Lightfoot). Mr. Gladstone had the habit of reading the Bible every Sunday afternoon to old women on his estate. Tholuck: “I have but one passion, and that is Christ.” This is an echo of Paul’s words: “to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). But Paul is far from thinking that he has already obtained, or is already made perfect. He prays “that I may gain Christ, ... that I may know him” (Phil. 3:8, 10).

(i) From the lack of persistence in using the means appointed for Christian growth—such as the word of God, prayer, association with other believers, and personal effort for the conversion of the ungodly—sanctification does not always proceed in regular and unbroken course, and it is never completed in this life.

Phil. 3:12—“Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Jesus Christ”; 1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Carlyle, in his Life of John Sterling, chap. 8, says of Coleridge, that “whenever natural obligation or voluntary undertaking made it his duty to do anything, the fact seemed a sufficient reason for his not doing it.” A regular, advancing sanctification is marked, on the other hand, by a growing habit of instant and joyful obedience. The intermittent spring depends upon the reservoir in the mountain cave,—only when the rain fills the latter full, does the spring begin to flow. So to secure unbroken Christian activity, there must be constant reception of the word and Spirit of God.

Galen: “If diseases take hold of the body, there is nothing so certain to drive them out as diligent exercise.” Williams, Principles of Medicine: “Want of exercise and sedentary habits not only predispose to, but actually cause, disease.” The little girl who fell out of bed at night was asked how it happened. She replied that she went to sleep too near where she got in. Some Christians lose the joy of their religion by ceasing their Christian activities too soon after conversion. Yet others cultivate their spiritual lives from mere selfishness. Selfishness follows the line of least resistance. It is easier to pray in public and to attend meetings for prayer, than it is to go out into the unsympathetic world and engage in the work of winning souls. This is the fault of monasticism. Those grow most who forget themselves in their work for others. The discipline of life is ordained in God’s providence to correct tendencies to indolence. Even this discipline is often received in a rebellious spirit. The result is delay in the process of sanctification. Bengel: “Deus habet horas et moras”—“God has his hours and his delays.” German proverb: “Gut Ding will Weile haben”—“A good thing requires time.”

(j) Sanctification, both of the soul and of the body of the believer, is completed in the life to come,—that of the former at death, that of the latter at the resurrection.

Phil. 3:21—“who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself”; Col. 3:4—“When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with him be manifested in glory”; Heb. 12:14, 23—“Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord ... spirits of just men made perfect”; 1 John 3:2—“Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is”; Jude 24—“able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy”; Rev. 14:5—“And in their mouth was found no lie: they are without blemish.”

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 121, puts the completion of our sanctification, not at death, but at the appearing of the Lord “a second time, apart from sin, ... unto salvation” (Heb. 9:28; 1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23). When we shall see him as he is, instantaneous photographing of his image in our souls will take the place of the present slow progress from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18; 1 John 3:2). If by sanctification we mean, not a sloughing off of remaining depravity, but an ever increasing purity and perfection, then we may hold that the process of sanctification goes on forever. Our relation to Christ must always be that of the imperfect to the perfect, of the finite to the infinite; and for finite spirits, progress must always be possible. Clarke, Christian Theology, 373—“Not even at death can sanctification end.... The goal lies far beyond deliverance from sin.... There is no such thing as bringing the divine life to such completion that no further progress is possible to it.... Indeed, free and unhampered progress can scarcely begin until sin is left behind.” “O snows so pure, O peaks so high! I shall not reach you till I die!”

As Jesus’ resurrection was prepared by holiness of life, so the Christian’s resurrection is prepared by sanctification. When our souls are freed from the last remains of sin, then it will not be possible for us to be holden by death (cf. Acts 2:24). See Gordon, The Twofold Life, or Christ’s Work for us and in us; Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., April, 1884:205‐229; Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 657‐662.

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3. Erroneous Views refuted by these Scripture Passages

A. The Antinomian,—which holds that, since Christ’s obedience and sufferings have satisfied the demands of the law, the believer is free from obligation to observe it.

The Antinomian view rests upon a misinterpretation of Rom. 6:14—“Ye are not under law, but under grace.” Agricola and Amsdorf (1559) were representatives of this view. Amsdorf said that “good works are hurtful to salvation.” But Melanchthon’s words furnish the reply: “Sola fides justificat, sed fides non est sola.” F. W. Robertson states it: “Faith alone justifies, but not the faith that is alone.” And he illustrates: “Lightning alone strikes, but not the lightning which is without thunder; for that is summer lightning and harmless.” See Browning’s poem, Johannes Agricola in Meditation, in Dramatis Personæ, 300—“I have God’s warrant, Could I blend All hideous sins as in a cup, To drink the mingled venoms up, Secure my nature will convert The draught to blossoming gladness.” Agricola said that Moses ought to be hanged. This is Sanctification without Perseverance.

Sandeman, the founder of the sect called Sandemanians, asserted as his fundamental principle the deadliness of all doings, the necessity for inactivity to let God do his work in the soul. See his essay, Theron and Aspasia, referred to by Allen, in his Life of Jonathan Edwards, 114. Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts, in 1637, for holding “two dangerous errors: 1. The Holy Spirit personally dwells in a justified person; 2. No sanctification can evidence to us our justification.” Here the latter error almost destroyed the influence of the former truth. There is a little Antinomianism in the popular hymn: “Lay your deadly doings down, Down at Jesus’ feet; Doing is a deadly thing; Doing ends in death.” The colored preacher’s poetry only presented the doctrine in the concrete: “You may rip and te‐yar, You may cuss and swe‐yar, But you’re jess as sure of heaven, ’S if you’d done gone de‐yar.” Plain Andrew Fuller in England (1754‐1815) did excellent service in overthrowing popular Antinomianism.

To this view we urge the following objections:

(a) That since the law is a transcript of the holiness of God, its demands as a moral rule are unchanging. Only as a system of penalty and a method of salvation is the law abolished in Christ’s death.

Mat. 5:17‐19—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”; 48—“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”; 1 Pet. 1:16—“Ye shall be holy; for I am holy”; Rom. 10:4—“For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth”; Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ”; 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”; Col. 2:14—“having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross”; Heb. 2:15—“deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

(b) That the union between Christ and the believer secures not only the bearing of the penalty of the law by Christ, but also the impartation of Christ’s spirit of obedience to the believer,—in other words, brings him into communion with Christ’s work, and leads him to ratify it in his own experience.

Rom. 8:9, 10, 15—“_ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but __ the spirit is life because of righteousness.... For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear: but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father_”; Gal. 5:22‐25—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self‐control; against such there is no law. And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof”; 1 John 1:6—“If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth”; 3:6—“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him.”

(c) That the freedom from the law of which the Scriptures speak, is therefore simply that freedom from the constraint and bondage of the law, which characterizes those who have become one with Christ by faith.

Ps. 119:97—“O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day”; Rom. 3:8, 31—“and why not (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come? whose condemnation is just.... Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid: nay, we establish the law”; 6:14, 15, 22—“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid ... now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life”; 7:6—“But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter”; 8:4—“that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”; 1 Cor. 7:22—“he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord’s freedman”; Gal. 5:1—“For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage”; 1 Tim. 1:9—“law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly”; James 1:25—“the perfect law, the law of liberty.”

To sum up the doctrine of Christian freedom as opposed to Antinomianism, we may say that Christ does not free us, as the Antinomian believes, from the law as a rule of life. But he does free us (1) from the law as a system of curse and penalty; this he does by bearing the curse and penalty himself. Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation; this he does by making his obedience and merits ours. Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion; this he does by giving to us the spirit of obedience and sonship, by which the law is progressively realized within.

Christ, then, does not free us, as the Antinomian believes, from the law as a rule of life. But he does free us (1) from the law as a system of curse and penalty. This he does by bearing the curse and penalty himself. Just as law can do nothing with a man after it has executed its death‐penalty upon him, so law can do nothing with us, now that its death‐penalty has been executed upon Christ. There are some insects that expire in the act of planting their sting; and so, when the law gathered itself up and planted its sting in the heart of Christ, it expended all its power as a judge and avenger over us who believe. In the Cross, the law as a system of curse and penalty exhausted itself; so we were set free.

Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation: in other words, he frees us from the necessity of trusting our salvation to an impossible future obedience. As the sufferings of Christ, apart from any sufferings of ours, deliver us from eternal death, so the merits of Christ, apart from any merits of ours, give us a title to eternal life. By faith in what Christ has done and simple acceptance of his work for us, we secure a right to heaven. Obedience on our part is no longer rendered painfully, as if our salvation depended on it, but freely and gladly, in gratitude for what Christ has done for us. Illustrate by the English nobleman’s invitation to his park, and the regulations he causes to be posted up.

Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion. In putting an end to legalism, he provides against license. This he does by giving the spirit of obedience and sonship. He puts love in the place of fear; and this secures an obedience more intelligent, more thorough, and more hearty, than could have been secured by mere law. So he frees us from the burden and compulsion of the law, by realizing the law within us by his Spirit. The freedom of the Christian is freedom in the law, such as the musician experiences when the scales and exercises have become easy, and work has turned to play. See John Owen, Works, 3:366‐651; 6:1‐313; Campbell, The Indwelling Christ, 73‐81.

Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 195—“The supremacy of those books which contain the words of Jesus himself [i. e., the Synoptic Gospels] is that they incorporate, with the other elements of the religious life, the regulative will. Here for instance [in John] is the gospel of the contemplative life, which, ‘beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord is changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:18). The belief is that, with this beholding, life will take care of itself. Life will never take care of itself. Among other things, after the most perfect vision, it has to ask what aspirations, principles, affections, belong to life, and then to cultivate the will to embody these things. Here is the common defect of all religions. They fail to marry religion to the common life. Christ did not stop short of this final word; but if we leave him for even the greatest of his disciples, we are in danger of missing it.” This utterance of Gould is surprising in several ways. It attributes to John alone the contemplative attitude of mind, which the quotation given shows to belong also to Paul. It ignores the constant appeals in John to the will: “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21). It also forgets that “life” in John is the whole being, including intellect, affection, and will, and that to have Christ for one’s life is absolutely to exclude Antinomianism.

B. The Perfectionist,—which holds that the Christian may, in this life, become perfectly free from sin. This view was held by John Wesley in England, and by Mahan and Finney in America.

Finney, Syst. Theol., 500, declares regeneration to be “an instantaneous change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.” The claims of Perfectionists, however, have been modified from “freedom from all sin,” to “freedom from all known sin,” then to “entire consecration,” and finally to “Christian assurance.” H. W. Webb‐Peploe, in S. S. Times, June 25, 1898—“The Keswick teaching is that no true Christian need wilfully or knowingly sin. Yet this is not sinless perfection. It is simply according to our faith that we receive, and faith only draws from God according to our present possibilities. These are limited by the presence of indwelling corruption; and, while never needing to sin within the sphere of the light we possess, there are to the last hour of our life upon the earth powers of corruption within every man, which defile his best deeds and give to even his holiest efforts that ‘nature of sin’ of which the 9th Article in the Church of England Prayerbook speaks so strongly.” Yet it is evident that this corruption is not regarded as real sin, and is called “nature of sin” only in some non‐natural sense.

Dr. George Peck says: “In the life of the most perfect Christian there is every day renewed occasion for self‐abhorrence, for repentance, for renewed application of the blood of Christ, for application of the rekindling of the Holy Spirit.” But why call this a state of perfection? F. B. Meyer: “We never say that self is dead; were we to do so, self would be laughing at us round the corner. The teaching of Romans 6 is, not that self is dead, but that the renewed will is dead to self, the man’s will saying Yes to Christ, and No to self; through the Spirit’s grace it constantly repudiates and mortifies the power of the flesh.” For statements of the Perfectionist view, see John Wesley’s Christian Theology, edited by Thornley Smith, 265‐273; Mahan, Christian Perfection, and art. in Bib. Repos. 2d Series, vol. IV, Oct. 1840:408‐428; Finney, Systematic Theology, 586‐766; Peck, Christian Perfection; Ritschl, Bib. Sac., Oct. 1878:656; A. T. Pierson, The Keswick Movement.

In reply, it will be sufficient to observe:

(a) That the theory rests upon false conceptions: first, of the law,—as a sliding‐scale of requirement graduated to the moral condition of creatures, instead of being the unchangeable reflection of God’s holiness; secondly, of sin,—as consisting only in voluntary acts instead of embracing also those dispositions and states of the soul which are not conformed to the divine holiness; thirdly, of the human will,—as able to choose God supremely and persistently at every moment of life, and to fulfil at every moment the obligations resting upon it, instead of being corrupted and enslaved by the Fall.

This view reduces the debt to the debtor’s ability to pay,—a short and easy method of discharging obligations. I can leap over a church steeple, if I am only permitted to make the church steeple low enough; and I can touch the stars, if the stars will only come down to my hand. The Philistines are quite equal to Samson, if they may only cut off Samson’s locks. So I can obey God’s law, if I may only make God’s law what I want it to be. The fundamental error of perfectionism is its low view of God’s law; the second is its narrow conception of sin. John Wesley: “I believe a person filled with love of God is still liable to involuntary transgressions. Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please; I do not.” The third error of perfectionism is its exaggerated estimate of man’s power of contrary choice. To say that, whatever may have been the habits of the past and whatever may be the evil affections of the present, a man is perfectly able at any moment to obey the whole law of God, is to deny that there are such things as character and depravity. Finney, Gospel Themes, 383, indeed, disclaimed “all expectations of attaining this state ourselves, and by our own independent, unaided efforts.” On the Law of God, see pages 537‐544.

Augustine: “Every lesser good has an essential element of sin.” Anything less than the perfection that belongs normally to my present stage of development is a coming short of the law’s demand. R. W. Dale, Fellowship with Christ, 359—“For us and in this world, the divine is always the impossible. Give me a law for individual conduct which requires a perfection that is within my reach, and I am sure that the law does not represent the divine thought. ‘Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 3:12)—this, from the beginning, has been the confession of saints.” The Perfectionist is apt to say that we must “take Christ twice, once for justification and once for sanctification.” But no one can take Christ for justification without at the same time taking him for sanctification. Dr. A. A. Hodge calls this doctrine “Neonomianism,” because it holds not to one unchanging, ideal, and perfect law of God, but to a second law given to human weakness when the first law has failed to secure obedience.

(1) The law of God demands perfection. It is a transcript of God’s nature. Its object is to reveal God. Anything less than the demand of perfection would misrepresent God. God could not give a law which a sinner could obey. In the very nature of the case there can be no sinlessness in this life for those who have once sinned. Sin brings incapacity as well as guilt. All men have squandered a part of the talent intrusted to them by God, and therefore no man can come up to the demands of that law which requires all that God gave to humanity at its creation together with interest on the investment. (2) Even the best Christian comes short of perfection. Regeneration makes only the dominant disposition holy. Many affections still remain unholy and require to be cleansed. Only by lowering the demands of the law, making shallow our conceptions of sin, and mistaking temporary volition for permanent bent of the will, can we count ourselves to be perfect. (3) Absolute perfection is attained not in this world but in the world to come. The best Christians count themselves still sinners, strive most earnestly for holiness, have imputed but not inherent sanctification, are saved by hope.

(b) That the theory finds no support in, but rather is distinctly contradicted by, Scripture.

First, the Scriptures never assert or imply that the Christian may in this life live without sin; passages like 1 John 3:6, 9, if interpreted consistently with the context, set forth either the ideal standard of Christian living or the actual state of the believer so far as respects his new nature.

1 John 3:6—“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him”; 9—“Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.” Ann. Par. Bible, in loco:—“John is contrasting the states in which sin and grace severally predominate, without reference to degrees in either, showing that all men are in one or the other.” Neander: “John recognizes no intermediate state, no gradations. He seizes upon the radical point of difference. He contrasts the two states in their essential nature and principle. It is either love or hate, light or darkness, truth or a lie. The Christian life in its essential nature is the opposite of all sin. If there be sin, it must be the afterworking of the old nature.” Yet all Christians are required in Scripture to advance, to confess sin, to ask forgiveness, to maintain warfare, to assume the attitude of ill desert in prayer, to receive chastisement for the removal of imperfections, to regard full salvation as matter of hope, not of present experience.

John paints only in black and white; there are no intermediate tints or colors. Take the words in 1 John 3:6 literally, and there never was and never can be a regenerate person. The words are hyperbolical, as Paul’s words in Rom. 6:2—“We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein”—are metaphorical; see E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., 1892:375, note. The Emperor William refused the request for an audience prepared by a German‐American, saying that Germans born in Germany but naturalized in America became Americans: “Ich kenne Amerikaner, Ich kenne Deutsche, aber Deutsch‐Amerikaner kenne Ich nicht”—“I know Americans, I know Germans, but German‐Americans I do not know.”

Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 110—“St. John uses the noun sin and the verb to sin in two senses: to denote the power or principle of sin, or to denote concrete acts of sin. The latter sense he generally expresses by the plural sins.... The Christian is guilty of particular acts of sin for which confession and forgiveness are required, but as he has been freed from the bondage of sin he cannot habitually practise it nor abide in it, still less can he be guilty of sin in its superlative form, by denial of Christ.”

Secondly, the apostolic admonitions to the Christians and Hebrews show that no such state of complete sanctification had been generally attained by the Christians of the first century.

Rom. 8:24—“For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth?” The party feeling, selfishness, and immorality found among the members of the Corinthian church are evidence that they were far from a state of entire sanctification.

Thirdly, there is express record of sin committed by the most perfect characters of Scripture—as Noah, Abraham, Job, David, Peter.

We are urged by perfectionists “to keep up the standard.” We do this, not by calling certain men perfect, but by calling Jesus Christ perfect. In proportion to our sanctification, we are absorbed in Christ, not in ourselves. Self‐consciousness and display are a poor evidence of sanctification. The best characters of Scripture put their trust in a standard higher than they have ever realized in their own persons, even in the righteousness of God.

Fourthly, the word τέλειος, as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, can fairly be held to signify only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment.

1 Cor. 2:6—“We speak wisdom, however, among the perfect,” or, as the Am. Revisers have it, “among them that are fullgrown”; Phil. 3:15—“Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded.” Men are often called perfect, when free from any fault which strikes the eyes of the world. See Gen. 6:9—“Noah was a righteous man, and perfect”; Job 1:1—“that man was perfect and upright.” On τέλειος, see Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:110.

The τέλειοι are described in Heb. 5:14—“Solid food is for the mature (τελείων) who on account of habit have their perceptions disciplined for the discriminating of good and evil” (Dr. Kendrick’s translation). The same word “perfect” is used of Jacob in Gen. 25:27—“Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents” = a harmless man, exemplary and well‐balanced, as a man of business. Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 132—“’Perfect’ in Job = Horace’s ‘integer vitæ,’ being the adjective of which ‘integrity’ is the substantive.”

Fifthly, the Scriptures distinctly deny that any man on earth lives without sin.

1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”; Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”; James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also”; 1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

T. T. Eaton, Sanctification: “1. Some mistake regeneration for sanctification. They have been unconverted church members. When led to faith in Christ, and finding peace and joy, they think they are sanctified, when they are simply converted. 2. Some mistake assurance of faith for sanctification. But joy is not sanctification. 3. Some mistake the baptism of the Holy Spirit for sanctification. But Peter sinned grievously at Antioch, after he had received that baptism. 4. Some think that doing the best one can is sanctification. But he who measures by inches, for feet, can measure up well. Some regard sin as only a voluntary act, whereas the sinful nature is the fountain. Stripping off the leaves of the Upas tree does not answer. 6. Some mistake the power of the human will, and fancy that an act of will can free a man from sin. They ignore the settled bent of the will, which the act of will does not change.”

Sixthly, the declaration: “ye were sanctified” (1 Cor. 6:11), and the designation: “saints” (1 Cor. 1:2), applied to early believers, are, as the whole epistle shows, expressive of a holiness existing in germ and anticipation; the expressions deriving their meaning not so much from what these early believers were, as from what Christ was, to whom they were united by faith.

When N. T. believers are said to be “sanctified,” we must remember the O. T. use of the word. “Sanctify” may have either the meaning “to make holy outwardly,” or “to make holy inwardly.” The people of Israel and the vessels of the tabernacle were made holy in the former sense; their sanctification was a setting apart to the sacred use. Num. 8:17—“all the firstborn among the children of Israel are mine.... I sanctified them for myself”; Deut. 33:3—“Yea, he loveth the people; all his saints are in thy hand”; 2 Chron. 29:19—“all the vessels ... have we prepared and sanctified.” The vessels mentioned were first immersed, and then sprinkled from day to day according to need. So the Christian by his regeneration is set apart for God’s service, and in this sense is a “saint” and “sanctified.” More than this, he has in him the beginnings of purity,—he is “clean as a whole,” though he yet needs “to wash his feet” (John 13:10)—that is, to be cleansed from the recurring defilements of his daily life. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:551—“The error of the Perfectionist is that of confounding imputed sanctification with inherent sanctification. It is the latter which is mentioned in 1 Cor. 1:30—‘Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... sanctification.’ ”

Water from the Jordan is turbid, but it settles in the bottle and seems pure—until it is shaken. Some Christians seem very free from sin, until you shake them,—then they get “riled.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 871—“Is there not a higher Christian life? Yes, and a higher life beyond it, and a higher still beyond. The Christian life is ever higher and higher. It must pass through all stages between its beginning and its perfection.” C. D. Case: “The great objection to [this theory of] complete sanctification is that, if possessed at all, it is not a development of our own character.”

(c) That the theory is disapproved by the testimony of Christian experience.—In exact proportion to the soul’s advance in holiness does it shrink from claiming that holiness has been already attained, and humble itself before God for its remaining apathy, ingratitude, and unbelief.

Phil. 3:12‐14—“Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.” Some of the greatest advocates of perfectionism have been furthest from claiming any such perfection; although many of their less instructed followers claimed it for them, and even professed to have attained it themselves.

In Luke 7:1‐10, the centurion does not think himself worthy to go to Jesus, or to have him come under his roof, yet the elders of the Jews say: “He is worthy that thou shouldest do this”; and Jesus himself says of him: “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” “Holy to Jehovah” was inscribed upon the mitre of the high priest (Ex. 28:36). Others saw it, but he saw it not. Moses knew not that his face shone (Ex. 34:29). The truest holiness is that of which the possessor is least conscious; yet it is his real diadem and beauty (A. J. Gordon). “The nearer men are to being sinless, the less they talk about it” (Dwight L. Moody). “Always strive for perfection: never believe you have reached it” (Arnold of Rugby). Compare with this, Ernest Renan’s declaration that he had nothing to alter in his life. “I have not sinned for some time,” said a woman to Mr. Spurgeon. “Then you must be very proud of it,” he replied. “Indeed I am!” said she. A pastor says: “No one can attain the ‘Higher Life,’ and escape making mischief.” John Wesley lamented that not one in thirty retained the blessing.

Perfectionism is best met by proper statements of the nature of the law and of sin (Ps. 119:96). While we thus rebuke spiritual pride, however, we should be equally careful to point out the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification, and their equal importance as together making up the Biblical idea of salvation. While we show no favor to those who would make sanctification a sudden and paroxysmal act of the human will, we should hold forth the holiness of God as the standard of attainment, and the faith in a Christ of infinite fulness as the medium through which that standard is to be gradually but certainly realized in us (2 Cor. 3:18).

We should imitate Lyman Beecher’s method of opposing perfectionism—by searching expositions of God’s law. When men know what the law is, they will say with the Psalmist: “I have seen an end of all perfection; thy commandment is exceeding broad” (Ps. 119:96). And yet we are earnestly and hopefully to seek in Christ for a continually increasing measure of sanctification: 1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... sanctification”; 2 Cor. 3:18—“But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” Arnold of Rugby: “Always expect to succeed, and never think you have succeeded.”

Mr. Finney meant by entire sanctification only that it is possible for Christians in this life by the grace of God to consecrate themselves so unreservedly to his service as to live without conscious and wilful disobedience to the divine commands. He did not claim himself to have reached this point; he made at times very impressive confessions of his own sinfulness; he did not encourage others to make for themselves the claim to have lived without conscious fault. He held however that such a state is attainable, and therefore that its pursuit is rational. He also admitted that such a state is one, not of absolute, but only of relative, sinlessness. His error was in calling it a state of entire sanctification. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 377‐384.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 116—“It is possible that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is such a total surrender of self to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self instead of suffering constant defeat.... If the doctrine of sinless perfection is a heresy, the doctrine of contentment with sinful imperfection is a greater heresy.... It is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.” Caird, Evolution of Religion, 1:138—“If, according to the German proverb, it is provided that the trees shall not grow into the sky, it is equally provided that they shall always grow toward it; and the sinking of the roots into the soil is inevitably accompanied by a further expansion of the branches.”

See Hovey, Doctrine of the Higher Christian Life, Compared with Scripture, also Hovey, Higher Christian Life Examined, in Studies in Ethics and Theology, 344‐427; Snodgrass, Scriptural Doctrine of Sanctification; Princeton Essays, 1:335‐365; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:213‐258; Calvin, Institutes, III, 11:6; Bib. Repos., 2d Series, 1:44‐58; 2:143‐166; Woods, Works, 4:465‐523; H. A. Boardman, The “Higher Life” Doctrine of Sanctification; William Law, Practical Treatise on Christian Perfection; E. H. Johnson, The Highest Life.

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II. Perseverance

The Scriptures declare that, in virtue of the original purpose and continuous operation of God, all who are united to Christ by faith will infallibly continue in a state of grace and will finally attain to everlasting life. This voluntary continuance, on the part of the Christian, in faith and well‐doing we call perseverance. Perseverance is, therefore, the human side or aspect of that spiritual process which, as viewed from the divine side, we call sanctification. It is not a mere natural consequence of conversion, but involves a constant activity of the human will from the moment of conversion to the end of life.

Adam’s holiness was mutable; God did not determine to keep him. It is otherwise with believers in Christ; God has determined to give them the kingdom (Luke 12:32). Yet this keeping by God, which we call sanctification, is accompanied and followed by a keeping of himself on the part of the believer, which we call perseverance. The former is alluded to in John 17:11, 12—“keep them in thy name.... I kept them in thy name.... I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition”; the latter is alluded to in 1 John 5:18—“_he that was __ begotten of God keepeth himself._” Both are expressed in Jude 21, 24—“Keep yourselves in the love of God.... Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling...”

A German treatise on Pastoral Theology is entitled: “Keep What Thou Hast”—an allusion to 2 Tim. 1:14—“That good thing which was committed unto thee guard through the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us.” Not only the pastor, but every believer, has a charge to keep; and the keeping of ourselves is as important a point of Christian doctrine as is the keeping of God. Both are expressed in the motto: Teneo, Teneor—the motto on the front of the Y. M. C. A. building in Boston, underneath a stone cross, firmly clasped by two hands. The colored preacher said that “Perseverance means: 1. Take hold; 2. Hold on; 3. Never let go.”

Physically, intellectually, morally, spiritually, there is need that we persevere. Paul, in 1 Cor. 9:27, declares that he smites his body under the eye and makes a slave of it, lest after having preached to others he himself should be rejected; and in 2 Tim. 4:7, at the end of his career, he rejoices that he has “kept the faith.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 115—“The Christian is as ‘a tree planted by the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season’ (Ps. 1:3), but to conclude that his growth will be as irresistible as that of the tree, coming as a matter of course simply because he has by regeneration been planted in Christ, is a grave mistake. The disciple is required to be consciously and intelligently active in his own growth, as the tree is not, ‘to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure’ (2 Pet. 1:10) by surrendering himself to the divine action.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 379—“Man is able to fall, and God is able to keep him from falling; and through the various experiences of life God will so save his child out of all evil that he will be morally incapable of falling.”

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1. Proof of the Doctrine of Perseverance

A. From Scripture.

John 10:28, 29—“they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who hath given them unto me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand”; Rom. 11:29—“For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance”; 1 Cor. 13:7—“endureth all things”; cf. 13—“But now abideth faith, hope, love”; Phil. 1:6—“being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ”; 2 Thess. 3:3—“But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and guard you from the evil one”; 2 Tim. 1:12—“I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day”; 1 Pet. 1:5—“who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”; Rev. 3:10—“Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”

2 Tim. 1:12—τὴν παραθήκην μου—Ellicott translates: “the trust committed to me,” or “my deposit” = the office of preaching the gospel, the stewardship entrusted to the apostle; cf. 1 Tim. 6:20—“O Timothy, keep thy deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην; and 2 Tim. 1:14—“Keep the good deposit”—where the deposit seems to be the faith or doctrine delivered to him to preach. Nicoll, The Church’s One Foundation, 211—“Some Christians waken each morning with a creed of fewer articles, and those that remain they are ready to surrender to a process of argument that convinces them. But it is a duty to keep. ‘Ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know’ (1 John 2:20).... Ezra gave to his men a treasure of gold and silver and sacrificial vessels, and he charged them: ‘Watch ye, and keep them, until ye weigh them ... in thy chambers of the house of Jehovah’ (Ezra 8:29).” See in the Autobiography of C. H. Spurgeon, 1:225, 256, the outline of a sermon on John 6:37—“All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Mr. Spurgeon remarks that this text can give us no comfort unless we see: 1. that God has given us his Holy Spirit; 2. that we have given ourselves to him. Christ will not cast us out because of our great sins, our long delays, our trying other saviors, our hardness of heart, our little faith, our poor dull prayers, our unbelief, our inveterate corruptions, our frequent backslidings, nor finally because every one else passes us by.

B. From Reason.

(a) It is a necessary inference from other doctrines,—such as election, union with Christ, regeneration, justification, sanctification.

Election of certain individuals to salvation is election to bestow upon them such influences of the Spirit as will lead them not only to accept Christ, but to persevere and be saved. Union with Christ is indissoluble; regeneration is the beginning of a work of new creation, which is declared in justification, and completed in sanctification. All these doctrines are parts of a general scheme, which would come to naught if any single Christian were permitted to fall away.

(b) It accords with analogy,—God’s preserving care being needed by, and being granted to, his spiritual, as well as his natural, creation.

As natural life cannot uphold itself, but we “live, and move, and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), so spiritual life cannot uphold itself, and God maintains the faith, love, and holy activity which he has originated. If he preserves our natural life, much more may we expect him to preserve the spiritual. 1 Tim. 6:13—“I charge thee before God who preserveth all things alive” (R. V. marg.)—ζωογονοῦντος τὰ πάντα = the great Preserver of all enables us to persist in our Christian course.

(c) It is implied in all assurance of salvation,—since this assurance is given by the Holy Spirit, and is based not upon the known strength of human resolution, but upon the purpose and operation of God.

S. R. Mason: “If Satan and Adam both fell away from perfect holiness, it is a million to one that, in a world full of temptations and with all appetites and habits against me, I shall fall away from imperfect holiness, unless God by his almighty power keep me.” It is in the power and purpose of God, then, that the believer puts his trust. But since this trust is awakened by the Holy Spirit, it must be that there is a divine fact corresponding to it; namely, God’s purpose to exert his power in such a way that the Christian shall persevere. See Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 2:550‐578; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 445‐460.

Job 6:11—“What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is mine end, that I should be patient?” “Here is a note of self‐ distrust. To be patient without any outlook, to endure without divine support—Job does not promise it, and he trembles at the prospect; but none the less he sets his feet on the toilsome way” (Genung). Dr. Lyman Beecher was asked whether he believed in the perseverance of the saints. He replied: “I do, except when the wind is from the East.” But the value of the doctrine is that we can believe it even when the wind is from the East. It is well to hold on to God’s hand, but it is better to have God’s hand hold on to us. When we are weak, and forgetful and asleep, we need to be sure of God’s care. Like the child who thought he was driving, but who found, after the trouble was over, that his father after all had been holding the reins, we too find when danger comes that behind our hands are the hands of God. The Perseverance of the Saints, looked at from the divine side, is the Preservation of the Saints, and the hymn that expresses the Christian’s faith is the hymn: “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in his excellent word!”

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2. Objections to the Doctrine of Perseverance

These objections are urged chiefly by Arminians and by Romanists.

A. That it is inconsistent with human freedom.—Answer: It is no more so than is the doctrine of Election or the doctrine of Decrees.

The doctrine is simply this, that God will bring to bear such influences upon all true believers, that they will freely persevere. Moule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 47—“Is grace, in any sense of the word, ever finally withdrawn? Yes, if by grace is meant any free gift of God tending to salvation; or, more specially, any action of the Holy Spirit tending in its nature thither.... But if by grace be meant the dwelling and working of Christ in the truly regenerate, there is no indication in Scripture of the withdrawal of it.”

B. That it tends to immorality.—Answer: This cannot be, since the doctrine declares that God will save men by securing their perseverance in holiness.

2 Tim. 2:19—“Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his: and, Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness”; that is, the temple of Christian character has upon its foundation two significant inscriptions, the one declaring God’s power, wisdom, and purpose of salvation; the other declaring the purity and holy activity, on the part of the believer, through which God’s purpose is to be fulfilled; 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”; 2 Pet. 1:10, 11—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble: for thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

C. That it leads to indolence.—Answer: This is a perversion of the doctrine, continuously possible only to the unregenerate; since, to the regenerate, certainty of success is the strongest incentive to activity in the conflict with sin.

1 John 5:4—“For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.” It is notoriously untrue that confidence of success inspires timidity or indolence. Thomas Fuller: “Your salvation is his business; his service your business.” The only prayers God will answer are those we ourselves cannot answer. For the very reason that “it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure,” the apostle exhorts: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12, 13).

D. That the Scripture commands to persevere and warnings against apostasy show that certain, even of the regenerate, will fall away.—Answer:

(a) They show that some, who are apparently regenerate, will fall away.

Mat. 18:7—“Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling! for it must needs be that the occasions come; but woe to that man through whom the occasion cometh”; 1 Cor. 11:19—“For there must be also factions [lit. ‘heresies’] among you, that they that are approved may be made manifest among you”; 1 John 2:19—“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us.” Judas probably experienced strong emotions, and received strong impulses toward good, under the influence of Christ. The only falling from grace which is recognized in Scripture is not the falling of the regenerate, but the falling of the unregenerate, from influences tending to lead them to Christ. The Rabbins said that a drop of water will suffice to purify a man who has accidentally touched a creeping thing, but an ocean will not suffice for his cleansing so long as he purposely keeps the creeping thing in his hand.

(b) They show that the truly regenerate, and those who are only apparently so, are not certainly distinguishable in this life.

Mal. 3:18—“Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not”; Mat. 13:25, 47—“while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away.... Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind”; Rom. 9:6, 7—“For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel: neither, because they are Abraham’s seed, are they all children”; Rev. 3:1—“I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.” The tares were never wheat, and the bad fish never were good, in spite of the fact that their true nature was not for a while recognized.

(c) They show the fearful consequences of rejecting Christ, to those who have enjoyed special divine influences, but who are only apparently regenerate.

Heb. 10:26‐29—“For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?” Here “sanctified” = external sanctification, like that of the ancient Israelites, by outward connection with God’s people; cf. 1 Cor. 7:14—“the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife.”

In considering these and the following Scripture passages, much will depend upon our view of inspiration. If we hold that Christ’s promise was fulfilled and that his apostles were led into all the truth, we shall assume that there is unity in their teaching, and shall recognize in their variations only aspects and applications of the teaching of our Lord; in other words, Christ’s doctrine in John 10:28, 29 will be the norm for the interpretation of seemingly diverse and at first sight inconsistent passages. There was a “faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints,” and for this primitive faith we are exhorted “to contend earnestly” (Jude 3).

(d) They show what the fate of the truly regenerate would be, in case they should not persevere.

Heb. 6:4‐6—“For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” This is to be understood as a hypothetical case,—as is clear from verse 9 which follows: “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things which accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” Dr. A. C. Kendrick, Com. in loco: “In the phrase ‘once enlightened,’ the ‘once’ is ἅπαξ = once for all. The text describes a condition subjectively possible, and therefore needing to be held up in earnest warning to the believer, while objectively and in the absolute purpose of God, it never occurs.... If passages like this teach the possibility of falling from grace, they teach also the impossibility of restoration to it. The saint who once apostatizes has apostatized forever.” So Ez. 18:24—“when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity ... in them shall he die”; 2 Pet. 2:20—“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state is become worse with them than the first.” So, in Mat. 5:13—“if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”—if this teaches that the regenerate may lose their religion, it also teaches that they can never recover it. It really shows only that Christians who do not perform their proper functions as Christians become harmful and contemptible (Broadus, in loco).

(e) They show that the perseverance of the truly regenerate may be secured by these very commands and warnings.

1 Cor. 9:27—“I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected”—or, to bring out the meaning more fully: “I beat my body blue [or, ‘strike it under the eye’], and make it a slave, lest after having been a herald to others, I myself should be rejected” (“unapproved,” “counted unworthy of the prize”); 10:12—“Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” Quarles, Emblems: “The way to be safe is never to be secure.” Wrightnour: “Warning a traveler to keep a certain path, and by this means keeping him in that path, is no evidence that he will ever fall into a pit by the side of the path simply because he is warned of it.”

(f) They do not show that it is certain, or possible, that any truly regenerate person will fall away.

The Christian is like a man making his way up‐hill, who occasionally slips back, yet always has his face set toward the summit. The unregenerate man has his face turned downwards, and he is slipping all the way. C. H. Spurgeon: “The believer, like a man on shipboard, may fall again and again on the deck, but he will never fall overboard.”

E. That we have actual examples of such apostasy.—We answer:

(a) Such are either men once outwardly reformed, like Judas and Ananias, but never renewed in heart;

But, per contra, instance the experience of a man in typhoid fever, who apparently repented, but who never remembered it when he was restored to health. Sick‐bed and death‐bed conversions are not the best. There was one penitent thief, that none might despair; there was but one penitent thief, that none might presume. The hypocrite is like the wire that gets a second‐hand electricity from the live wire running parallel with it. This second‐hand electricity is effective only within narrow limits, and its efficacy is soon exhausted. The live wire has connection with the source of power in the dynamo.

(b) Or they are regenerate men, who, like David and Peter, have fallen into temporary sin, from which they will, before death, be reclaimed by God’s discipline.

Instance the young profligate who, in a moment of apparent drowning, repented, was then rescued, and afterward lived a long life as a Christian. If he had not been rescued, his repentance would never have been known, nor the answer to his mother’s prayers. So, in the moment of a backslider’s death, God can renew repentance and faith. Cromwell on his death‐bed questioned his Chaplain as to the doctrine of final perseverance, and, on being assured that it was a certain truth, said: “Then I am happy, for I am sure that I was once in a state of grace.” But reliance upon a past experience is like trusting in the value of a policy of life insurance upon which several years’ premiums have been unpaid. If the policy has not lapsed, it is because of extreme grace. The only conclusive evidence of perseverance is a present experience of Christ’s presence and indwelling, corroborated by active service and purity of life.

On the general subject, see Edwards, Works, 3:509‐532, and 4:104; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity, 2:164‐194; John Owen, Works, vol. 11; Woods, Works, 3:221‐246; Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 662‐666.

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I. The Constitution Of The Church. Or Church Polity

I. Definition of the Church.

(a) The church of Christ, in its largest signification, is the whole company of regenerate persons in all times and ages, in heaven and on earth (Mat. 16:18; Eph. 1:22, 23; 3:10; 5:24, 25; Col. 1:18; Heb. 12:23). In this sense, the church is identical with the spiritual kingdom of God; both signify that redeemed humanity in which God in Christ exercises actual spiritual dominion (John 3:3, 5).

Mat. 16:18—“thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”; Eph. 1:22, 23—“and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”; 3:10—“to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”; 5:24, 25—“But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it”; Col. 1:18—“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence”; Heb. 12:23—“the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven”; John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. ... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

Cicero’s words apply here: “Una navis est jam bonorum omnium”—all good men are in one boat. Cicero speaks of the state, but it is still more true of the church invisible. Andrews, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1883:14, mentions the following differences between the church and kingdom, or, as we prefer to say, between the visible church and the invisible church: (1) the church began with Christ,—the kingdom began earlier; (2) the church is confined to believers in the historic Christ,—the kingdom includes all God’s children; (3) the church belongs wholly to this world—not so the kingdom; (4) the church is visible,—not so the kingdom; (5) the church has quasi organic character, and leads out into local churches,—this is not so with the kingdom. On the universal or invisible church, see Cremer, Lexicon N. T., transl., 113, 114, 331; Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 12.

H. C. Vedder: “The church is a spiritual body, consisting only of those regenerated by the Spirit of God.” Yet the Westminster Confession affirms that the church “consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children.” This definition includes in the church a multitude who not only give no evidence of regeneration, but who plainly show themselves to be unregenerate. In many lands it practically identifies the church with the world. Augustine indeed thought that “the field,” in Mat. 13:38, is the church, whereas Jesus says very distinctly that it “is the world.” Augustine held that good and bad alike were to be permitted to dwell together in the church, without attempt to separate them; see Broadus, Com. in loco. But the parable gives a reason, not why we should not try to put the wicked out of the church, but why God does not immediately put them out of the world, the tares being separated from the wheat only at the final judgment of mankind.

Yet the universal church includes all true believers. It fulfils the promise of God to Abraham in Gen. 15:5—“Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said into him, So shall thy seed be.” The church shall be immortal, since it draws its life from Christ: Is. 65:22—“as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people”; Zech. 4:2, 3—“a candlestick all of gold ... and two olive‐trees by it.” Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:242, 243—“A Spanish Roman Catholic, Cervantes, said: ‘Many are the roads by which God carries his own to heaven.’ Döllinger: ‘Theology must become a science not, as heretofore, for making war, but for making peace, and thus bringing about that reconciliation of churches for which the whole civilized world is longing.’ In their loftiest moods of inspiration, the Catholic Thomas à Kempis, the Puritan Milton, the Anglican Keble, rose above their peculiar tenets, and above the limits that divide denominations, into the higher regions of a common Christianity. It was the Baptist Bunyan who taught the world that there was ‘a common ground of communion which no difference of external rites could efface.’ It was the Moravian Gambold who wrote: ‘The man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of his empire, Would speak but love. With love, the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate things, And make one thing of all theology.’ ”

(b) The church, in this large sense, is nothing less than the body of Christ—the organism to which he gives spiritual life, and through which he manifests the fulness of his power and grace. The church therefore cannot be defined in merely human terms, as an aggregate of individuals associated for social, benevolent, or even spiritual purposes. There is a transcendent element in the church. It is the great company of persons whom Christ has saved, in whom he dwells, to whom and through whom he reveals God (Eph. 1:22, 23).

Eph. 1:22, 23—“the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” He who is the life of nature and of humanity reveals himself most fully in the great company of those who have joined themselves to him by faith. Union with Christ is the presupposition of the church. This alone transforms the sinner into a Christian, and this alone makes possible that vital and spiritual fellowship between individuals which constitutes the organizing principle of the church. The same divine life which ensures the pardon and the perseverance of the believer unites him to all other believers. The indwelling Christ makes the church superior to and more permanent than all humanitarian organizations; they die, but because Christ lives, the church lives also. Without a proper conception of this sublime relation of the church to Christ, we cannot properly appreciate our dignity as church members, or our high calling as shepherds of the flock. Not “ubi ecclesia, ibi Christus,” but “ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia,” should be our motto. Because Christ is omnipresent and omnipotent, “the same yesterday, and to‐day, yea and forever” (Heb. 13:8), what Burke said of the nation is true of the church: It is “indeed a partnership, but a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”

McGiffert, Apostolic Church, 501—“Paul’s conception of the church as the body of Christ was first emphasized and developed by Ignatius. He reproduces in his writings the substance of all the Paulinism that the church at large made permanently its own: the preëxistence and deity of Christ, the union of the believer with Christ without which the Christian life is impossible, the importance of Christ’s death, the church the body of Christ. Rome never fully recognized Paul’s teachings, but her system rests upon his doctrine of the church the body of Christ. The modern doctrine however makes the kingdom to be not spiritual or future, but a reality of this world.” The redemption of the body, the redemption of institutions, the redemption of nations, are indeed all purposed by Christ. Christians should not only strive to rescue individual men from the slough of vice, but they should devise measures for draining that slough and making that vice impossible; in other words, they should labor for the coming of the kingdom of God in society. But this is not to identify the church with politics, prohibition, libraries, athletics. The spiritual fellowship is to be the fountain from which all these activities spring, while at the same time Christ’s “kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 24, 25, 207—“As Christ is the temple of God, so the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As God could be seen only through Christ, so the Holy Spirit can be seen only through the church. As Christ was the image of the invisible God, so the church is appointed to be the image of the invisible Christ, and the members of Christ, when they are glorified with him, shall be the express image of his person.... The church and the kingdom are not identical terms, if we mean by the kingdom the visible reign and government of Jesus Christ on earth. In another sense they are identical. As is the king, so is the kingdom. The king is present now in the world, only invisibly and by the Holy Spirit; so the kingdom is now present invisibly and spiritually in the hearts of believers. The king is to come again visibly and gloriously; so shall the kingdom appear visibly and gloriously. In other words, the kingdom is already here in mystery: it is to be here to manifestation. Now the spiritual kingdom is administered by the Holy Spirit, and it extends from Pentecost to Parousia. At the Parousia—the appearing of the Son of man in glory—when he shall take unto himself his great power and reign (Rev. 11:17), when he who has now gone into a far country to be invested with a kingdom shall return and enter upon his government (Luke 19:15), then the invisible shall give way to the visible, the kingdom in mystery shall emerge into the kingdom in manifestation, and the Holy Spirit’s administration shall yield to that of Christ.”

(c) The Scriptures, however, distinguish between this invisible or universal church, and the individual church, in which the universal church takes local and temporal form, and in which the idea of the church as a whole is concretely exhibited.

Mat. 10:32—“Every one therefore, who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven”; 12:34, 35—“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things”; Rom. 10:9, 10—“if thou shalt confess with thy month Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”; James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures”—we were saved, not for ourselves only, but as parts and beginnings of an organic kingdom of God; believers are called “firstfruits,” because from them the blessing shall spread, until the whole world shall be pervaded with the new life; Pentecost, as the feast of first‐fruits, was but the beginning of a stream that shall continue to flow until the whole race of man is gathered in.

R. S. Storrs: “When any truth becomes central and vital, there comes the desire to utter it,”—and we may add, not only in words, but in organization. So beliefs crystallize into institutions. But Christian faith is something more vital than the common beliefs of the world. Linking the soul to Christ, it brings Christians into living fellowship with one another before any bonds of outward organization exist; outward organization, indeed, only expresses and symbolizes this inward union of spirit to Christ and to one another. Horatius Bonar: “Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another’s soul wouldst reach; It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech. Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world’s famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed.”

Contentio Veritatis, 128, 129—“The kingdom of God is first a state of the individual soul, and then, secondly, a society made up of those who enjoy that state.” Dr. F. L. Patton: “The best way for a man to serve the church at large is to serve the church to which he belongs.” Herbert Stead: “The kingdom is not to be narrowed down to the church, nor the church evaporated into the kingdom.” To do the first is to set up a monstrous ecclesiasticism; to do the second is to destroy the organism through which the kingdom manifests itself and does its work in the world (W. R. Taylor). Prof. Dalman, in his work on The Words of Jesus in the Light of Postbiblical Writing and the Aramaic Language, contends that the Greek phrase translated “kingdom of God” should be rendered “the sovereignty of God.” He thinks that it points to the reign of God, rather than to the realm over which he reigns. This rendering, if accepted, takes away entirely the support from the Ritschlian conception of the kingdom of God as an earthly and outward organization.

(d) The individual church may be defined as that smaller company of regenerate persons, who, in any given community, unite themselves voluntarily together, in accordance with Christ’s laws, for the purpose of securing the complete establishment of his kingdom in themselves and in the world.

Mat. 18:17—“And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican”; Acts 14:23—“appointed for them elders in every church”; Rom. 16:5—“salute the church that is in their house”; 1 Cor. 1:2—“the church of God which is at Corinth”; 4:17—“even as I teach everywhere in every church”; 1 Thess. 2:14—“the churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus.”

We do not define the church as a body of “baptized believers,” because baptism is but one of “Christ’s laws,” in accordance with which believers unite themselves. Since these laws are the laws of church‐organization contained in the New Testament, no Sunday School, Temperance Society, or Young Men’s Christian Association, is properly a church. These organizations 1. lack the transcendent element—they are instituted and managed by man only; 2. they are not confined to the regenerate, or to those alone who give credible evidence of regeneration; 3. they presuppose and require no particular form of doctrine; 4. they observe no ordinances; 5. they are at best mere adjuncts and instruments of the church, but are not themselves churches; 6. their decisions therefore are devoid of the divine authority and obligation which belong to the decisions of the church.

The laws of Christ, in accordance with which believers unite themselves into churches, may be summarized as follows: 1. the sufficiency and sole authority of Scripture as the rule both of doctrine and polity; (2) credible evidence of regeneration and conversion as prerequisite to church‐membership; (3) immersion only, as answering to Christ’s command of baptism, and to the symbolic meaning of the ordinance; (4) the order of the ordinance, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as of divine appointment, as well as the ordinances themselves; (5) the right of each member of the church to a voice in its government and discipline; (6) each church, while holding fellowship with other churches, solely responsible to Christ; (7) the freedom of the individual conscience, and the total independence of church and state. Hovey in his Restatement of Denominational Principles (Am. Bap. Pub. Society) gives these principles as follows: 1. the supreme authority of the Scriptures in matters of religion; 2. personal accountability to God in religion; 3. union with Christ essential to salvation; 4. a new life the only evidence of that union; 5. the new life one of unqualified obedience to Christ. The most concise statement of Baptist doctrine and history is that of Vedder, in Jackson’s Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, 1:74‐85.

With the lax views of Scripture which are becoming common among us there is a tendency in our day to lose sight of the transcendent element in the church. Let us remember that the church is not a humanitarian organization resting upon common human brotherhood, but a supernatural body, which traces its descent from the second, not the first, Adam, and which manifests the power of the divine Christ. Mazzini in Italy claimed Jesus, but repudiated his church. So modern socialists cry: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and deny that there is need of anything more than human unity, development, and culture. But God has made the church to sit with Christ “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 2:6). It is the regeneration which comes about through union with Christ which constitutes the primary and most essential element in ecclesiology. “We do not stand, first of all, for restricted communion, nor for immersion as the only valid form of baptism, nor for any particular theory of Scripture, but rather for a regenerate church membership. The essence of the gospel is a new life in Christ, of which Christian experience is the outworking and Christian consciousness is the witness. Christian life is as important as conversion. Faith must show itself by works. We must seek the temporal as well as spiritual salvation of men, and the salvation of society also” (Leighton Williams).

E. G. Robinson: “Christ founded a church only proleptically. In Mat. 18:17, ἐκκλησία is not used technically. The church is an outgrowth of the Jewish synagogue, though its method and economy are different. There was little or no organization at first. Christ himself did not organize the church. This was the work of the apostles after Pentecost. The germ however existed before. Three persons may constitute a church, and may administer the ordinances. Councils have only advisory authority. Diocesan episcopacy is antiscriptural and antichristian.”

The principles mentioned above are the essential principles of Baptist churches, although other bodies of Christians have come to recognise a portion of them. Bodies of Christians which refuse to accept these principles we may, in a somewhat loose and modified sense, call churches; but we cannot regard them as churches organized in all respects according to Christ’s laws, or as completely answering to the New Testament model of church organization. We follow common usage when we address a Lieutenant Colonel as “Colonel,” and a Lieutenant Governor as “Governor.” It is only courtesy to speak of pedobaptist organizations as “churches,” although we do not regard these churches as organized in full accordance with Christ’s laws as they are indicated to us in the New Testament. To refuse thus to recognize them would be a discourtesy like that of the British Commander in Chief, when he addressed General Washington as “Mr. Washington.”

As Luther, having found the doctrine of justification by faith, could not recognize that doctrine as Christian which taught justification by works, but denounced the church which held it as Antichrist, saying, “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, God help me,” so we, in matters not indifferent, as feet‐washing, but vitally affecting the existence of the church, as regenerate church‐membership, must stand by the New Testament, and refuse to call any other body of Christians a regular church, that is not organized according to Christ’s laws. The English word “church” like the Scotch “kirk” and the German “Kirche,” is derived from the Greek κυριακή, and means “belonging to the Lord.” The term itself should teach us to regard only Christ’s laws as our rule of organization.

(e) Besides these two significations of the term “church,” there are properly in the New Testament no others. The word ἐκκλησία is indeed used in Acts 7:38; 19:32, 39; Heb. 2:12, to designate a popular assembly; but since this is a secular use of the term, it does not here concern us. In certain passages, as for example Acts 9:31 (ἐκκλησία, sing., א A B C), 1 Cor. 12:28, Phil. 3:6, and 1 Tim. 3:15, ἐκκλησία appears to be used either as a generic or as a collective term, to denote simply the body of independent local churches existing in a given region or at a given epoch. But since there is no evidence that these churches were bound together in any outward organization, this use of the term ἐκκλησία cannot be regarded as adding any new sense to those of “the universal church” and “the local church” already mentioned.

Acts 7:38—“the church [marg. ‘congregation’] in the wilderness” = the whole body of the people of Israel; 19:32—“the assembly was in confusion”—the tumultuous mob in the theatre at Ephesus; 39—“the regular assembly”; 9:31—“So the church throughout all Judæa and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified”; 1 Cor. 12:28—“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers”; Phil. 3:6—“as touching zeal, persecuting the church”; 1 Tim. 3:15—“that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

In the original use of the word ἐκκλησία, as a popular assembly, there was doubtless an allusion to the derivation from ἐκ and καλέω, to call out by herald. Some have held that the N. T. term contains an allusion to the fact that the members of Christ’s church are called, chosen, elected by God. This, however, is more than doubtful. In common use, the term had lost its etymological meaning, and signified merely an assembly, however gathered or summoned. The church was never so large that it could not assemble. The church of Jerusalem gathered for the choice of deacons (Acts 6:2, 5), and the church of Antioch gathered to hear Paul’s account of his missionary journey (Acts 14:27).

It is only by a common figure of rhetoric that many churches are spoken of together in the singular number, in such passages as Acts 9:31. We speak generically of “man,” meaning the whole race of men; and of “the horse,” meaning all horses. Gibbon, speaking of the successive tribes that swept down upon the Roman Empire, uses a noun in the singular number, and describes them as “the several detachments of that immense army of northern barbarians,”—yet he does not mean to intimate that these tribes had any common government. So we may speak of “the American college” or “the American theological seminary,” but we do not thereby mean that the colleges or the seminaries are bound together by any tie of outward organization.

So Paul says that God has set in the church apostles, prophets, and teachers (1 Cor. 12:28), but the word “church” is only a collective term for the many independent churches. In this same sense, we may speak of “the Baptist church” of New York, or of America; but it must be remembered that we use the term without any such implication of common government as is involved in the phrases “the Presbyterian church,” or “the Protestant Episcopal church,” or “the Roman Catholic church”; with us, in this connection, the term “church” means simply “churches.”

Broadus, in his Com. on Mat., page 359, suggests that the word ἐκκλησία in Acts 9:31, “denotes the original church at Jerusalem, whose members were by the persecution widely scattered throughout Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and held meetings wherever they were, but still belonged to the one original organization.... When Paul wrote to the Galatians, nearly twenty years later, these separate meetings had been organized into distinct churches, and so he speaks (Gal. 1:22) in reference to that same period, of ‘the churches of Judæa which were in Christ.’ ” On the meaning of ἐκκλησία, see Cremer, Lex. N. T., 329; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:18; Girdlestone, Syn. O. T., 367; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 301; Dexter, Congregationalism, 25; Dagg, Church Order, 100‐120; Robinson, N. T. Lex., sub voce.

The prevailing usage of the N. T. gives to the term ἐκκλησία the second of these two significations. It is this local church only which has definite and temporal existence, and of this alone we henceforth treat. Our definition of the individual church implies the two following particulars:

A. The church, like the family and the state, is an institution of divine appointment.

This is plain: (a) from its relation to the church universal, as its concrete embodiment; (b) from the fact that its necessity is grounded in the social and religious nature of man; (c) from the Scripture,—as for example, Christ’s command in Mat. 18:17, and the designation “church of God,” applied to individual churches (1 Cor. 1:2).

President Wayland: “The universal church comes before the particular church. The society which Christ has established is the foundation of every particular association calling itself a church of Christ.” Andrews, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1883:35‐58, on the conception ἐκκλησία in the N. T., says that “the ‘church’ is the prius of all local ‘churches.’ ἐκκλησία in Acts 9:31 = the church, so far as represented in those provinces. It is ecumenical‐local, as in 1 Cor. 10:33. The local church is a microcosm, a specialized localization of the universal body. קהל, in the O. T. and in the Targums, means the whole congregation of Israel, and then secondarily those local bodies which were parts and representations of the whole. Christ, using Aramaic, probably used קהל in Mat. 18:17. He took his idea of the church from it, not from the heathen use of the word ἐκκλησία, which expresses the notion of locality and state much more than קהל. The larger sense of ἐκκλησία is the primary. Local churches are points of consciousness and activity for the great all‐inclusive unit, and they are not themselves the units for an ecclesiastical aggregate. They are faces, not parts of the one church.”

Christ, in Mat. 18:17, delegates authority to the whole congregation of believers, and at the same time limits authority to the local church. The local church is not an end in itself, but exists for the sake of the kingdom. Unity is not to be that of merely local churches, but that of the kingdom, and that kingdom is internal, “cometh not with observation” (Luke 17:20), but consists in “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). The word “church,” in the universal sense, is not employed by any other N. T. writer before Paul. Paul was interested, not simply in individual conversions, but in the growth of the church of God, as the body of Christ. He held to the unity of all local churches with the mother church at Jerusalem. The church in a city or in a house is merely a local manifestation of the one universal church and derived its dignity therefrom. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: “As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and being gathered became one, so may thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.”

Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 92—“The social action of religion springs from its very essence. Men of the same religion have no more imperious need than that of praying and worshiping together. State police have always failed to confine growing religious sects within the sanctuary or the home ... God, it is said, is the place where spirits blend. In rising toward him, man necessarily passes beyond the limits of his own individuality. He feels instinctively that the principle of his being is the principle of the life of his brethren also, that that which gives him safety must give it to all.” Rothe held that, as men reach the full development of their nature and appropriate the perfection of the Savior, the separation between the religious and the moral life will vanish, and the Christian state, as the highest sphere of human life representing all human functions, will displace the church. “In proportion as the Savior Christianizes the state by means of the church, must the progressive completion of the structure of the church prove the cause of its abolition. The decline of the church is not therefore to be deplored, but is to be recognized as the consequence of the independence and completeness of the religious life” (Encyc. Brit., 21:2). But it might equally be maintained that the state, as well as the church, will pass away, when the kingdom of God is fully come; see John 4:21—“the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father”; 1 Cor. 15:24—“Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power”; Rev. 21:22—“And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof.”

B. The church, unlike the family and the state, is a voluntary society.

(a) This results from the fact that the local church is the outward expression of that rational and free life in Christ which characterizes the church as a whole. In this it differs from those other organizations of divine appointment, entrance into which is not optional. Membership in the church is not hereditary or compulsory. (b) The doctrine of the church, as thus defined, is a necessary outgrowth of the doctrine of regeneration. As this fundamental spiritual change is mediated not by outward appliances, but by inward and conscious reception of Christ and his truth, union with the church logically follows, not precedes, the soul’s spiritual union with Christ.

We have seen that the church is the body of Christ. We now perceive that the church is, by the impartation to it of Christ’s life, made a living body, with duties and powers of its own. A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 53, emphasizes the preliminary truth. He shows that the definition: The church a voluntary association of believers, united together for the purposes of worship and edification, is most inadequate, not to say incorrect. It is no more true than that hands and feet are voluntarily united in the human body for the purposes of locomotion and work. The church is formed from within. Christ, present by the Holy Ghost, regenerating men by the sovereign action of the Spirit, and organizing them into himself as the living centre, is the only principle that can explain the existence of the church. The Head and the body are therefore one—one in fact, and one in name. He whom God anointed and filled with the Holy Ghost is called “the Christ” (1 John 5:1—“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God”); and the church which is his body and fulness is also called “the Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12—“all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is the Christ”).

Dorner includes under his doctrine of the church: (1) the genesis of the church, through the new birth of the Spirit, or Regeneration; (2) the growth and persistence of the church through the continuous operation of the Spirit in the means of grace, or Ecclesiology proper, as others call it; (3) the completion of the church, or Eschatology. While this scheme seems designed to favor a theory of baptismal regeneration, we must commend its recognition of the fact that the doctrine of the church grows out of the doctrine of regeneration and is determined in its nature by it. If regeneration has always conversion for its obverse side, and if conversion always includes faith in Christ, it is vain to speak of regeneration without faith. And if union with the church is but the outward expression of a preceding union with Christ which involves regeneration and conversion, then involuntary church‐membership is an absurdity, and a misrepresentation of the whole method of salvation.

The value of compulsory religion may be illustrated from David Hume’s experience. A godly matron of the Canongate, so runs the story, when Hume sank in the mud in her vicinity, and on account of his obesity could not get out, compelled the sceptic to say the Lord’s Prayer before she would help him. Amos Kendall, on the other hand, concluded in his old age that he had not been acting on Christ’s plan for saving the world, and so, of his own accord, connected himself with the church. Martineau, Study, 1:319—“Till we come to the State and the Church, we do not reach the highest organism of human life, into the perfect working of which all the disinterested affections and moral enthusiasms and noble ambitions flow.”

Socialism abolishes freedom, which the church cultivates and insists upon as the principle of its life. Tertullian: “Nec religionis est cogere religionem”—“It is not the business of religion to compel religion.” Vedder, History of the Baptists: “The community of goods in the church at Jerusalem was a purely voluntary matter; see Acts 5:4—‘While it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power?’ The community of goods does not seem to have continued in the church at Jerusalem after the temporary stress had been relieved, and there is no reason to believe that any other church in the apostolic age practised anything of the kind.” By abolishing freedom, socialism destroys all possibility of economical progress. The economical principle of socialism is that, relatively to the enjoyment of commodities, the individual shall be taken care of by the community, to the effect of his being relieved of the care of himself. The communism in the Acts was: 1. not for the community of mankind in general, but only for the church within itself; 2. not obligatory, but left to the discretion of individuals; 3. not permanent, but devised for a temporary crisis. On socialism, see James MacGregor, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:35‐68.

Schurman, Agnosticism, 166—“Few things are of more practical consequence for the future of religion in America than the duty of all good men to become identified with the visible church. Liberal thinkers have, as a rule, underestimated the value of the church. Their point of view is individualistic, ‘as though a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin.’ ‘The old is for slaves’ they declare. But it is also true that the old is for freedmen who know its true uses. It is the bane of the religion of dogma that it has driven many of the choicest religious souls out of the churches. In its purification of the temple, it has lost sight of the object of the temple. The church, as an institution, is an organism and embodiment such as the religion of spirit necessarily creates. Spiritual religion is not the enemy, it is the essence, of institutional religion.”

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II. Organization of the Church

1. The fact of organization.

Organization may exist without knowledge of writing, without written records, lists of members, or formal choice of officers. These last are the proofs, reminders, and helps of organization, but they are not essential to it. It is however not merely informal, but formal, organization in the church, to which the New Testament bears witness.

That there was such organization is abundantly shown from (a) its stated meetings, (b) elections, and (c) officers; (d) from the designations of its ministers, together with (e) the recognized authority of the minister and of the church; (f) from its discipline, (g) contributions, (h) letters of commendation, (i) registers of widows, (j) uniform customs, and (k) ordinances; (l) from the order enjoined and observed, (m) the qualifications for membership, and (n) the common work of the whole body.

(a) Acts 20:7—“upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”; Heb. 10:25—“not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another.”

(b) Acts 1:23‐26—the election of Matthias; 6:5, 6—the election of deacons.

(c) Phil. 1:1—“_the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons._”

(d) Acts 20:17, 28—“the elders of the church ... the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops [marg.: ‘overseers’].”

(e) Mat. 18:17—“And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican”; 1 Pet. 5:2—“Tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according to the will of God.”

(f) 1 Cor. 5:4, 5, 13—“in the name of our Lord Jesus, ye being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.... Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.”

(g) Rom. 15:26—“For it hath been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at Jerusalem”; 1 Cor. 16:1, 2—“_Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I __ gave order to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collection be made when I come._”

(h) Acts 18:27—“And when he was minded to pass over into Achaia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him”; 2 Cor. 3:1—“Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?”

(i) 1 Tim. 5:9—“Let none be enrolled as a widow under threescore years old”; cf. Acts 6:1—“there arose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.”

(j) 1 Cor. 11:16—“But if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.”

(k) Acts 2:41—“They then that received his word were baptized”; 1 Cor. 11:23‐26—“For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”—the institution of the Lord’s Supper.

(l) 1 Cor. 14:40—“let all things be done decently and in order”; Col. 2:5—“For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.”

(m) Mat. 28:19—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; Acts 2:47—“And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved.”

(n) Phil. 2:30—“because for the work of Christ he came nigh unto death, hazarding his life to supply that which was lacking in your service toward me.”

As indicative of a developed organization in the N. T. church, of which only the germ existed before Christ’s death, it is important to notice the progress in names from the Gospels to the Epistles. In the Gospels, the word “disciples” is the common designation of Christ’s followers, but it is not once found in the Epistles. In the Epistles, there are only “saints,” “brethren,” “churches.” A consideration of the facts here referred to is sufficient to evince the unscriptural nature of two modern theories of the church:

A. The theory that the church is an exclusively spiritual body, destitute of all formal organization, and bound together only by the mutual relation of each believer to his indwelling Lord.

The church, upon this view, so far as outward bonds are concerned, is only an aggregation of isolated units. Those believers who chance to gather at a particular place, or to live at a particular time, constitute the church of that place or time. This view is held by the Friends and by the Plymouth Brethren. It ignores the tendencies to organization inherent in human nature; confounds the visible with the invisible church; and is directly opposed to the Scripture representations of the visible church as comprehending some who are not true believers.

Acts 5:1‐11—Ananias and Sapphira show that the visible church comprehended some who were not true believers; 1 Cor. 14:23—“If therefore the whole church be assembled together and all speak with tongues, and there come in men unlearned or unbelieving, will they not say that ye are mad?”—here, if the church had been an unorganized assembly, the unlearned visitors who came in would have formed a part of it; Phil. 3:18—“For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Some years ago a book was placed upon the Index, at Rome, entitled: “The Priesthood a Chronic Disorder of the Human Race.” The Plymouth Brethren dislike church organizations, for fear they will become machines; they dislike ordained ministers, for fear they will become bishops. They object to praying for the Holy Spirit, because he was given on Pentecost, ignoring the fact that the church after Pentecost so prayed: see Acts 4:31—“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” What we call a giving or descent of the Holy Spirit is, since the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, only a manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit, and this certainly may be prayed for; see Luke 11:13—“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

The Plymouth Brethren would “unite Christendom by its dismemberment, and do away with all sects by the creation of a new sect, more narrow and bitter in its hostility to existing sects than any other.” Yet the tendency to organize is so strong in human nature, that even Plymouth Brethren, when they meet regularly together, fall into an informal, if not a formal, organization; certain teachers and leaders are tacitly recognized as officers of the body; committees and rules are unconsciously used for facilitating business. Even one of their own writers, C. H. M., speaks of the “natural tendency to association without God,—as in the Shinar Association or Babel Confederacy of Gen. 11, which aimed at building up a name upon the earth. The Christian church is God’s appointed association to take the place of all these. Hence God confounds the tongues in Gen. 11 (judgment); gives tongues in Acts 2 (grace); but only one tongue is spoken in Rev. 7 (glory).”

The Nation, Oct. 16, 1890:303—“Every body of men must have one or more leaders. If these are not provided, they will make them for themselves. You cannot get fifty men together, at least of the Anglo‐Saxon race, without their choosing a presiding officer and giving him power to enforce rules and order.” Even socialists and anarchists have their leaders, who often exercise arbitrary power and oppress their followers. Lyman Abbott says nobly of the community of true believers: “The grandest river in the world has no banks; it rises in the Gulf of Mexico; it sweeps up through the Atlantic Ocean along our coast; it crosses the Atlantic, and spreads out in great broad fanlike form along the coast of Europe; and whatever land it kisses blooms and blossoms with the fruit of its love. The apricot and the fig are the witness of its fertilizing power. It is bound together by the warmth of its own particles, and by nothing else.” This is a good illustration of the invisible church, and of its course through the world. But the visible church is bound to be distinguishable from unregenerate humanity, and its inner principle of association inevitably leads to organization.

Dr. Wm. Reid, Plymouth Brethrenism Unveiled, 79‐143, attributes to the sect the following Church‐principles: (1) the church did not exist before Pentecost; (2) the visible and the invisible church identical; (3) the one assembly of God; (4) the presidency of the Holy Spirit; (5) rejection of a one‐man and man‐made ministry; (6) the church is without government. Also the following heresies: (1) Christ’s heavenly humanity; (2) denial of Christ’s righteousness, as being obedience to law; (3) denial that Christ’s righteousness is imputed; (4) justification in the risen Christ; (5) Christ’s non‐atoning sufferings; (6) denial of moral law as rule of life; (7) the Lord’s day is not the Sabbath; (8) perfectionism; (9) secret rapture of the saints,—caught up to be with Christ. To these we may add; (10) premillennial advent of Christ.

On the Plymouth Brethren and their doctrine, see British Quar., Oct. 1873:202; Princeton Rev., 1872:48‐77; H. M. King, in Baptist Review, 1881:438‐465; Fish, Ecclesiology, 314‐316; Dagg, Church Order, 80‐83; R. H. Carson, The Brethren, 8‐14; J. C. L. Carson, The Heresies of the Plymouth Brethren; Croskery, Plymouth Brethrenism; Teulon, Hist. and Teachings of Plymouth Brethren.

B. The theory that the form of church organization is not definitely prescribed in the New Testament, but is a matter of expediency, each body of believers being permitted to adopt that method of organization which best suits its circumstances and condition.

The view under consideration seems in some respects to be favored by Neander, and is often regarded as incidental to his larger conception of church history as a progressive development. But a proper theory of development does not exclude the idea of a church organization already complete in all essential particulars before the close of the inspired canon, so that the record of it may constitute a providential example of binding authority upon all subsequent ages. The view mentioned exaggerates the differences of practice among the N. T. churches; underestimates the need of divine direction as to methods of church union; and admits a principle of ’church powers,’ which may be historically shown to be subversive of the very existence of the church as a spiritual body.

Dr. Galusha Anderson finds the theory of optional church government in Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, and says that not until Bishop Bancroft was there claimed a divine right of Episcopacy. Hunt, also, in his Religious Thought in England, 1:57, says that Hooker gives up the divine origin of Episcopacy. So Jacob, Eccl. Polity of the N. T., and Hatch, Organization of Early Christian Churches,—both Jacob and Hatch belonging to the Church of England. Hooker identified the church with the nation; see Eccl. Polity, book viii, chap. 1:7; 4:6; 8:9. He held that the state has committed itself to the church, and that therefore the church has no right to commit itself to the state. The assumption, however, that the state has committed itself to the church is entirely unwarranted; see Gore, Incarnation, 209, 210. Hooker declares that, even if the Episcopalian order were laid down in Scripture, which he denies, it would still not be unalterable, since neither “God’s being the author of laws for the government of his church, nor his committing them unto Scripture, is any reason sufficient wherefore all churches should forever be bound to keep them without change.”

T. M. Lindsay, in Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1895:548‐563, asserts that there were at least five different forms of church government in apostolic times: 1. derived from the seven wise men of the Hebrew village community, representing the political side of the synagogue system; 2. derived from the ἐπισκόπος, the director of the religious or social club among the heathen Greeks; 3. derived from the patronate (προστάτης, προῖστάμενος) known among the Romans, the churches of Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica, being of this sort; 4. derived from the personal preëminence of one man, nearest in family to our Lord, James being president of the church at Jerusalem; 5. derived from temporary superintendents (ἡγούμενοι), or leaders of the band of missionaries, as in Crete and Ephesus. Between all these churches of different polities, there was intercommunication and fellowship. Lindsay holds that the unity was wholly spiritual. It seems to us that he has succeeded merely in proving five different varieties of one generic type—the generic type being only democratic, with two orders of officials, and two ordinances—in other words, in showing that the simple N. T. model adopts itself to many changing conditions, while the main outlines do not change. Upon any other theory, church polity is a matter of individual taste or of temporary fashion. Shall missionaries conform church order to the degraded ideas of the nations among which they labor? Shall church government be despotic in Turkey, a limited monarchy in England, a democracy in the United States of America, and two‐headed in Japan? For the development theory of Neander, see his Church History, 1:179‐190. On the general subject, see Hitchcock, in Am. Theol. Rev., 1860:28‐54; Davidson, Eccl. Polity, 1‐42; Harvey, The Church.

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2. The nature of this organization

The nature of any organization may be determined by asking, first: who constitute its members? secondly: for what object has it been formed? and, thirdly: what are the laws which regulate its operations?

The three questions with which our treatment of the nature of this organization begins are furnished us by Pres. Wayland, in his Principles and Practices of Baptists.

A. They only can properly be members of the local church, who have previously become members of the church universal,—or, in other words, have become regenerate persons.

Only those who have been previously united to Christ are, in the New Testament, permitted to unite with his church. See Acts 2:47—“And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved [Am. Rev.: ‘those that were saved’]”; 5:14—“and believers were the more added to the Lord”; 1 Cor. 1:2—“the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.”

From this limitation of membership to regenerate persons, certain results follow:

(a) Since each member bears supreme allegiance to Christ, the church as a body must recognize Christ as the only lawgiver. The relation of the individual Christian to the church does not supersede, but furthers and expresses, his relation to Christ.

1 John 2:20—“And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things”—see Neander, Com., in loco—“No believer is at liberty to forego this maturity and personal independence, bestowed in that inward anointing [of the Holy Spirit], or to place himself in a dependent relation, inconsistent with this birthright, to any teacher whatever among men..... This inward anointing furnishes an element of resistance to such arrogated authority.” Here we have reproved the tendency on the part of ministers to take the place of the church, in Christian work and worship, instead of leading it forward in work and worship of its own. The missionary who keeps his converts in prolonged and unnecessary tutelage is also untrue to the church organization of the New Testament and untrue to Christ whose aim in church training is to educate his followers to the bearing of responsibility and the use of liberty. Macaulay: “The only remedy for the evils of liberty is liberty.” “Malo periculosam libertatem”—“Liberty is to be preferred with all its dangers.” Edwin Burritt Smith: “There is one thing better than good government, and that is self‐government.” By their own mistakes, a self‐governing people and a self‐governing church will finally secure good government, whereas the “good government” which keeps them in perpetual tutelage will make good government forever impossible.

Ps. 144:12—“our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth.” Archdeacon Hare: “If a gentleman is to grow up, it must be like a tree: there must be nothing between him and heaven.” What is true of the gentleman is true of the Christian. There need to be encouraged and cultivated in him an independence of human authority and a sole dependence upon Christ. The most sacred duty of the minister is to make his church self‐governing and self‐ supporting, and the best test of his success is the ability of the church to live and prosper after he has left it or after he is dead. Such ministerial work requires self‐sacrifice and self‐ effacement. The natural tendency of every minister is to usurp authority and to become a bishop. He has in him an undeveloped pope. Dependence on his people for support curbs this arrogant spirit. A church establishment fosters it. The remedy both for slavishness and for arrogance lies in constant recognition of Christ as the only Lord.

(b) Since each regenerate man recognizes in every other a brother in Christ, the several members are upon a footing of absolute equality (Mat. 23:8‐10).

Mat. 23:8‐10—“But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven”; John 15:5—“I am the vine, ye are the branches”—no one branch of the vine outranks another; one may be more advantageously situated, more ample in size, more fruitful; but all are alike in kind, draw vitality from one source. Among the planets “one star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41), yet all shine in the same heaven, and draw their light from the same sun. “The serving‐man may know more of the mind of God than the scholar.” Christianity has therefore been the foe to heathen castes. The Japanese noble objected to it, “because the brotherhood of man was incompatible with proper reverence for rank”. There can be no rightful human lordship over God’s heritage (1 Pet. 5:3—“neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but making yourselves ensamples to the flock”).

Constantine thought more highly of his position as member of Christ’s church than of his position as head of the Roman Empire. Neither the church nor its pastor should be dependent upon the unregenerate members of the congregation. Many a pastor is in the position of a lion tamer with his head in the lion’s mouth. So long as he strokes the fur the right way, all goes well; but, if by accident he strokes the wrong way, off goes his head. Dependence upon the spiritual body which he instructs is compatible with the pastor’s dignity and faithfulness. But dependence upon those who are not Christians and who seek to manage the church with worldly motives and in a worldly way, may utterly destroy the spiritual effect of his ministry. The pastor is bound to be the impartial preacher of the truth, and to treat each member of his church as of equal importance with every other.

(c) Since each local church is directly subject to Christ, there is no jurisdiction of one church over another, but all are on an equal footing, and all are independent of interference or control by the civil power.

Mat. 22:21—“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”; Acts 5:29—“We must obey God rather than men.” As each believer has personal dealings with Christ and for even the pastor to come between him and his Lord is treachery to Christ and harmful to his soul, so much more does the New Testament condemn any attempt to bring the church into subjection to any other church or combination of churches, or to make the church the creature of the state. Absolute liberty of conscience under Christ has always been a distinguishing tenet of Baptists, as it is of the New Testament (cf. Rom. 14:4—“Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be made to stand; for the Lord hath power to make him stand”). John Locke, 100 years before American independence: “The Baptists were the first and only propounders of absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty.” George Bancroft says of Roger Williams: “He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert the doctrine of liberty of conscience in religion.... Freedom of conscience was from the first a trophy of the Baptists.... Their history is written in blood.”

On Roger Williams, see John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England: “Such views are to‐day quite generally adopted by the more civilized portions of the Protestant world; but it is needless to say that they were not the views of the sixteenth century, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.” Cotton Mather said that Roger Williams “carried a windmill in his head,” and even John Quincy Adams called him “conscientiously contentious.” Cotton Mather’s windmill was one that he remembered or had heard of in Holland. It had run so fast in a gale as to set itself and a whole town on fire. Leonard Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, vii, says of Baptist churches: “It has been claimed for these churches that from the age of the Reformation onward they have been always foremost and always consistent in maintaining the doctrine of religious liberty. Let me not be understood as calling in question their right to so great an honor.”

Baptists hold that the province of the state is purely secular and civil,—religious matters are beyond its jurisdiction. Yet for economic reasons and to ensure its own preservation, it may guarantee to its citizens their religious rights, and may exempt all churches equally from burdens of taxation, in the same way in which it exempts schools and hospitals. The state has holidays, but no holy days. Hall Caine, in The Christian, calls the state, not the pillar of the church, but the caterpillar, that eats the vitals out of it. It is this, when it transcends its sphere and compels or forbids any particular form of religious teaching. On the charge that Roman Catholics were deprived of equal rights in Rhode Island, see Am. Cath. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1894:169‐177. This restriction was not in the original law, but was a note added by revisers, to bring the state law into conformity with the law of the mother country. Ezra 8:22—“I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen ... because ... The hand of our God is upon all them that seek him, for good”—is a model for the churches of every age. The church as an organized body should be ashamed to depend for revenue upon the state, although its members as citizens may justly demand that the state protect them in their rights of worship. On State and Church in 1492 and 1892, see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 209‐246, esp. 239‐241. On taxation of church property, and opposing it, see H. C. Vedder, in Magazine of Christian Literature, Feb. 1890: 265‐272.

B. The sole object of the local church is the glory of God, in the complete establishment of his kingdom, both in the hearts of believers and in the world. This object is to be promoted:

(a) By united worship,—including prayer and religious instruction; (b) by mutual watchcare and exhortation; (c) by common labors for the reclamation of the impenitent world.

(a) Heb. 10:25—“not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another.” One burning coal by itself will soon grow dull and go out, but a hundred together will give a fury of flame that will set fire to others. Notice the value of “the crowd” in politics and in religion. One may get an education without going to school or college, and may cultivate religion apart from the church; but the number of such people will be small, and they do not choose the best way to become intelligent or religious.

(b) 1 Thess. 5:11—“Wherefore exhort one another, and build each other up, even as also ye do”; Heb. 3:13—“Exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To‐day; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Churches exist in order to: 1. create ideals; 2. supply motives; 3. direct energies. They are the leaven hidden in the three measures of meal. But there must be life in the leaven, or no good will come of it. There is no use of taking to China a lamp that will not burn in America. The light that shines the furthest shines brightest nearest home.

(c) Mat. 28:19—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations”; Acts 8:4—“They therefore that were scattered abroad went about preaching the word”; 2 Cor. 8:5—“and this, not as we had hoped, but first they gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us through the will of God”; Jude 23—“_And on some have mercy, who are in __ doubt; and some save, snatching them out of the fire._” Inscribed upon a mural tablet of a Christian church, in Aneityum in the South Seas, to the memory of Dr. John Geddie, the pioneer missionary in that field, are the words: “When he came here, there were no Christians; when he went away, there were no heathen.” Inscription over the grave of David Livingstone in Westminster Abbey: “For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa, where with his last words he wrote: ‘All I can add in my solitude is, May Heaven’s richest blessing come down on everyone, American, English or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.’ ”

C. The law of the church is simply the will of Christ, as expressed in the Scriptures and interpreted by the Holy Spirit. This law respects:

(a) The qualifications for membership.—These are regeneration and baptism, i. e., spiritual new birth and ritual new birth; the surrender of the inward and of the outward life to Christ; the spiritual entrance into communion with Christ’s death and resurrection, and the formal profession of this to the world by being buried with Christ and rising with him in baptism.

(b) The duties imposed on members.—In discovering the will of Christ from the Scriptures, each member has the right of private judgment, being directly responsible to Christ for his use of the means of knowledge, and for his obedience to Christ’s commands when these are known.

How far does the authority of the church extend? It certainly has no right to say what its members shall eat and drink; to what societies they shall belong; what alliances in marriage or in business they shall contract. It has no right, as an organized body, to suppress vice in the community, or to regenerate society by taking sides in a political canvass. The members of the church, as citizens, have duties in all these lines of activity. The function of the church is to give them religious preparation and stimulus for their work. In this sense, however, the church is to influence all human relations. It follows the model of the Jewish commonwealth rather than that of the Greek state. The Greek πόλις was limited, because it was the affirmation of only personal rights. The Jewish commonwealth was universal, because it was the embodiment of the one divine will. The Jewish state was the most comprehensive of the ancient world, admitting freely the incorporation of new members, and looking forward to a worldwide religious communion in one faith. So the Romans gave to conquered lands the protection and the rights of Rome. But the Christian church is the best example of incorporation in conquest. See Westcott, Hebrews, 386, 387; John Fiske, Beginnings of New England, 1‐20; Dagg, Church Order, 74‐99; Curtis on Communion, 1‐61.

Abraham Lincoln: “This country cannot be half slave and half free” = the one part will pull the other over; there is an irrepressible conflict between them. So with the forces of Christ and of Antichrist in the world at large. Alexander Duff: “The church that ceases to be evangelistic will soon cease to be evangelical.” We may add that the church that ceases to be evangelical will soon cease to exist. The Fathers of New England proposed “to advance the gospel in these remote parts of the world, even if they should be but as stepping‐stones to those who were to follow them.” They little foresaw how their faith and learning would give character to the great West. Church and school went together. Christ alone is the Savior of the world, but Christ alone cannot save the world. Zinzendorf called his society “The Mustard‐seed Society” because it should remove mountains (Mat. 17:20). Hermann, Faith and Morals, 91, 238—“It is not by means of things that pretend to be imperishable that Christianity continues to live on; but by the fact that there are always persons to be found who, by their contact with the Bible traditions, become witnesses to the personality of Jesus and follow him as their guide, and therefore acquire sufficient courage to sacrifice themselves for others.”

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3. The genesis of this organization

(a) The church existed in germ before the day of Pentecost,—otherwise there would have been nothing to which those converted upon that day could have been “added” (Acts 2:47). Among the apostles, regenerate as they were, united to Christ by faith and in that faith baptized (Acts 19:4), under Christ’s instruction and engaged in common work for him, there were already the beginnings of organization. There was a treasurer of the body (John 13:29), and as a body they celebrated for the first time the Lord’s Supper (Mat. 26:26‐29). To all intents and purposes they constituted a church, although the church was not yet fully equipped for its work by the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2), and by the appointment of pastors and deacons. The church existed without officers, as in the first days succeeding Pentecost.

Acts 2:47—“And the Lord added to them [marg.: ‘together’] day by day those that were being saved”; 19:4—“And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus”; John 13:29—“For some thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus said unto him, Buy what things we have need of for the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor”; Mat. 26:26‐29—“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread ... and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat.... And he took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it”; Acts 2—the Holy Spirit is poured out. It is to be remembered that Christ himself is the embodied union between God and man, the true temple of God’s indwelling. So soon as the first believer joined himself to Christ, the church existed in miniature and germ.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 55, quotes Acts 2:41—“and there were added,” not to them, or to the church, but, as in Acts 5:14, and 11:24—“to the Lord.” This, Dr. Gordon declares, means not a mutual union of believers, but their divine coüniting with Christ; not voluntary association of Christians, but their sovereign incorporation into the Head, and this incorporation effected by the Head, through the Holy Spirit. The old proverb, “Tres faciunt ecclesiam,” is always true when one of the three is Jesus (Dr. Deems). Cyprian was wrong when he said that “he who has not the church for his mother, has not God for his Father”; for this could not account for the conversion of the first Christian, and it makes salvation dependent upon the church rather than upon Christ. The Cambridge Platform, 1648, chapter 6, makes officers essential, not to the being, but only to the well being, of churches, and declares that elders and deacons are the only ordinary officers; see Dexter, Congregationalism, 439.

Fish, Ecclesiology, 14‐11, by a striking analogy, distinguishes three periods of the church’s life: (1) the pre‐natal period, in which the church is not separated from Christ’s bodily presence; (2) the period of childhood, in which the church is under tutelage, preparing for an independent life; (3) the period of maturity, in which the church, equipped with doctrines and officers, is ready for self‐government. The three periods may be likened to bud, blossom, and fruit. Before Christ’s death, the church existed in bud only.

(b) That provision for these offices was made gradually as exigencies arose, is natural when we consider that the church immediately after Christ’s ascension was under the tutelage of inspired apostles, and was to be prepared, by a process of education, for independence and self‐ government. As doctrine was communicated gradually yet infallibly, through the oral and written teaching of the apostles, so we are warranted in believing that the church was gradually but infallibly guided to the adoption of Christ’s own plan of church organization and of Christian work. The same promise of the Spirit which renders the New Testament an unerring and sufficient rule of faith, renders it also an unerring and sufficient rule of practice, for the church in all places and times.

John 16:12‐26 is to be interpreted as a promise of gradual leading by the Spirit into all the truth; 1 Cor. 14:37—“the things which I write unto you ... they are the commandments of the Lord.” An examination of Paul’s epistles in their chronological order shows a progress in definiteness of teaching with regard to church polity, as well as with regard to doctrine in general. In this matter, as in other matters, apostolic instruction was given as providential exigencies demanded it. In the earliest days of the church, attention was paid to preaching rather than to organization. Like Luther, Paul thought more of church order in his later days than at the beginning of his work. Yet even in his first epistle we find the germ which is afterwards continuously developed. See:

(1) 1 Thess. 5:12, 13 (A. D. 52)—“But we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you (προῖσταμένους) in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work’s sake.”

(2) 1 Cor. 12:28 (A. D. 57)—“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps [ἀντιλήψεις = gifts needed by deacons], governments [κυβερνήσεις = gifts needed by pastors], divers kinds of tongues.”

(3) Rom. 12:6‐8 (A. D. 58)—“And having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith; or ministry [διακονίαν], let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth [ὁ προῖσταμένος], with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.”

(4) Phil. 1:1 (A. D. 62)—“Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi, with the bishops [ἐπισκόποις, marg.: ‘overseers’] and deacons [διακόνοις].”

(5) Eph. 4:11 (A. D. 63)—“And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers [ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους].”

(6) 1 Tim. 3:1, 2 (A. D. 66)—“If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. The bishop [τὸν ἐπίσκοπον] therefore must be without reproach.” On this last passage, Huther in Meyer’s Com. remarks: “Paul in the beginning looked at the church in its unity,—only gradually does he make prominent its leaders. We must not infer that the churches in earlier time were without leadership, but only that in the later time circumstances were such as to require him to lay emphasis upon the pastor’s office and work.” See also Schaff, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 62‐75.

McGiffert, in his Apostolic Church, puts the dates of Paul’s Epistles considerably earlier, as for example: 1 Thess., circ. 48; 1 Cor., c. 51, 52; Rom., 52, 53; Phil., 56‐58; Eph., 52, 53, or 56‐58; 1 Tim., 56‐58. But even before the earliest Epistles of Paul comes James 5:14—“Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church”—written about 48 A. D., and showing that within twenty years after the death of our Lord there had grown up a very definite form of church organization.

On the question how far our Lord and his apostles, in the organization of the church, availed themselves of the synagogue as a model, see Neander, Planting and Training, 28‐34. The ministry of the church is without doubt an outgrowth and adaptation of the eldership of the synagogue. In the synagogue, there were elders who gave themselves to the study and expounding of the Scriptures. The synagogues held united prayer, and exercised discipline. They were democratic in government, and independent of each other. It has sometimes been said that election of officers by the membership of the church came from the Greek ἐκκλησία, or popular assembly. But Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1:438, says of the elders of the synagogue that “their election depended on the choice of the congregation.” Talmud, Berachob, 55 a: “No ruler is appointed over a congregation, unless the congregation is consulted.”

(c) Any number of believers, therefore, may constitute themselves into a Christian church, by adopting for their rule of faith and practice Christ’s law as laid down in the New Testament, and by associating themselves together, in accordance with it, for his worship and service. It is important, where practicable, that a council of churches be previously called, to advise the brethren proposing this union as to the desirableness of constituting a new and distinct local body; and, if it be found desirable, to recognize them, after its formation, as being a church of Christ. But such action of a council, however valuable as affording ground for the fellowship of other churches, is not constitutive, but is simply declaratory; and, without such action, the body of believers alluded to, if formed after the N. T. example, may notwithstanding be a true church of Christ. Still further, a band of converts, among the heathen or providentially precluded from access to existing churches, might rightfully appoint one of their number to baptize the rest, and then might organize, de novo, a New Testament church.

The church at Antioch was apparently self‐created and self‐ directed. There is no evidence that any human authority, outside of the converts there, was invoked to constitute or to organize the church. As John Spillsbury put it about 1640: “Where there is a beginning, some must be first.” The initiative lies in the individual convert, and in his duty to obey the commands of Christ. No body of Christians can excuse itself for disobedience upon the plea that it has no officers. It can elect its own officers. Councils have no authority to constitute churches. Their work is simply that of recognizing the already existing organization and of pledging the fellowship of the churches which they represent. If God can of the stones raise up children unto Abraham, he can also raise up pastors and teachers from within the company of believers whom he has converted and saved.

Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:294, quotes from Luther, as follows: “If a company of pious Christian laymen were captured and sent to a desert place, and had not among them an ordained priest, and were all agreed in the matter, and elected one and told him to baptize, administer the Mass, absolve, and preach, such a one would be as true a priest as if all the bishops and popes had ordained him.” Dexter, Congregationalism, 51—“Luther came near discovering and reproducing Congregationalism. Three things checked him: 1. he undervalued polity as compared with doctrine; 2. he reacted from Anabaptist fanaticisms; 3. he thought Providence indicated that princes should lead and people should follow. So, while he and Zwingle alike held the Bible to teach that all ecclesiastical power inheres under Christ in the congregation of believers, the matter ended in an organization of superintendents and consistories, which gradually became fatally mixed up with the state.”

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III. Government of the Church

1. Nature of this government in general.

It is evident from the direct relation of each member of the church, and so of the church as a whole, to Christ as sovereign and lawgiver, that the government of the church, so far as regards the source of authority, is an absolute monarchy.

In ascertaining the will of Christ, however, and in applying his commands to providential exigencies, the Holy Spirit enlightens one member through the counsel of another, and as the result of combined deliberation, guides the whole body to right conclusions. This work of the Spirit is the foundation of the Scripture injunctions to unity. This unity, since it is a unity of the Spirit, is not an enforced, but an intelligent and willing, unity. While Christ is sole king, therefore, the government of the church, so far as regards the interpretation and execution of his will by the body, is an absolute democracy, in which the whole body of members is intrusted with the duty and responsibility of carrying out the laws of Christ as expressed in his word.

The seceders from the established church of Scotland, on the memorable 18th of May, 1843, embodied in their protest the following words: We go out “from an establishment which we loved and prized, through interference with conscience, the dishonor done to Christ’s crown, and the rejection of his sole and supreme authority as King in his church.” The church should be rightly ordered, since it is the representative and guardian of God’s truth—its “pillar and ground” (1 Tim. 3:15)—the Holy Spirit working in and through it.

But it is this very relation of the church to Christ and his truth which renders it needful to insist upon the right of each member of the church to his private judgment as to the meaning of Scripture; in other words, absolute monarchy, in this case, requires for its complement an absolute democracy. President Wayland: “No individual Christian or number of individual Christians, no individual church or number of individual churches, has original authority, or has power over the whole. None can add to or subtract from the laws of Christ, or interfere with his direct and absolute sovereignty over the hearts and lives of his subjects.” Each member, as equal to every other, has right to a voice in the decisions of the whole body; and no action of the majority can bind him against his conviction of duty to Christ.

John Cotton of Massachusetts Bay, 1643, Questions and Answers: “The royal government of the churches is in Christ, the stewardly or ministerial in the churches themselves.” Cambridge Platform, 1648, 10th chapter—“So far as Christ is concerned, church government is a monarchy; so far as the brotherhood of the church is concerned, it resembles a democracy.” Unfortunately the Platform goes further and declares that, in respect of the Presbytery and the Elders’ power, it is also an aristocracy.

Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, who held diverse views in philosophy, were once engaged in controversy. While the discussion was running through the press, Mr. Spencer, forced by lack of funds, announced that he would be obliged to discontinue the publication of his promised books on science and philosophy. Mr. Mill wrote him at once, saying that, while he could not agree with him in some things, he realized that Mr. Spencer’s investigations on the whole made for the advance of truth, and so he himself would be glad to bear the expense of the remaining volumes. Here in the philosophical world is an example which may well be taken to heart by theologians. All Christians indeed are bound to respect in others the right of private judgment while stedfastly adhering themselves to the truth as Christ has made it known to them.

Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, dug for each neophyte a grave, and buried him all but the head, asking him: “Art thou dead?” When he said: “Yes!” the General added: “Rise then, and begin to serve, for I want only dead men to serve me.” Jesus, on the other hand, wants only living men to serve him, for he gives life and gives it abundantly (John 10:10). The Salvation Army, in like manner, violates the principle of sole allegiance to Christ, and like the Jesuits puts the individual conscience and will under bonds to a human master. Good intentions may at first prevent evil results; but, since no man can be trusted with absolute power, the ultimate consequence, as in the case of the Jesuits, will be the enslavement of the subordinate members. Such autocracy does not find congenial soil in America,—hence the rebellion of Mr. and Mrs. Ballington Booth.

A. Proof that the government of the church is democratic or congregational.

(a) From the duty of the whole church to preserve unity in its action.

Rom. 12:16—“Be of the same mind one toward another”; 1 Cor. 1:10—“Now I beseech you ... that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment”; 2 Cor. 13:11—“be of the same mind”; Eph. 4:3—“giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”; Phil. 1:27—“that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one soul striving for the faith of the gospel”; 1 Pet. 3:8—“be ye all likeminded.”

These exhortations to unity are not mere counsels to passive submission, such as might be given under a hierarchy, or to the members of a society of Jesuits; they are counsels to coöperation and to harmonious judgment. Each member, while forming his own opinions under the guidance of the Spirit, is to remember that the other members have the Spirit also, and that a final conclusion as to the will of God is to be reached only through comparison of views. The exhortation to unity is therefore an exhortation to be open‐minded, docile, ready to subject our opinions to discussion, to welcome new light with regard to them, and to give up any opinion when we find it to be in the wrong. The church is in general to secure unanimity by moral suasion only; though, in case of wilful and perverse opposition to its decisions, it may be necessary to secure unity by excluding an obstructive member, for schism.

A quiet and peaceful unity is the result of the Holy Spirit’s work in the hearts of Christians. New Testament church government proceeds upon the supposition that Christ dwells in all believers. Baptist polity is the best possible polity for good people. Christ has made no provision for an unregenerate church‐membership, and for Satanic possession of Christians. It is best that a church in which Christ does not dwell should by dissension reveal its weakness, and fall to pieces; and any outward organization that conceals inward disintegration, and compels a merely formal union after the Holy Spirit has departed, is a hindrance instead of a help to true religion.

Congregationalism is not a strong government to look at. Neither is the solar system. Its enemies call it a rope of sand. It is rather a rope of iron filings held together by a magnetic current. Wordsworth: “Mightier far Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway Of magic portent over sun and star, Is love.” President Wayland: “We do not need any hoops of iron or steel to hold us together.” At high tide all the little pools along the sea shore are fused together. The unity produced by the inflowing of the Spirit of Christ is better than any mere external unity, whether of organization or of creed, whether of Romanism or of Protestantism. The times of the greatest external unity, as under Hildebrand, were times of the church’s deepest moral corruption. A revival of religion is a better cure for church quarrels than any change in church organization could effect. In the early church, though there was no common government, unity was promoted by active intercourse. Hospitality, regular delegates, itinerant apostles and prophets, apostolic and other epistles, still later the gospels, persecution, and even heresy, promoted unity—heresy compelling the exclusion of the unworthy and factious elements in the Christian community.

Dr. F. J. A. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia: “Not a word in the Epistle to the Ephesians exhibits the one ecclesia as made up of many ecclesiæ.... The members which make up the one ecclesia are not communities, but individual men.... The unity of the universal ecclesia ... is a truth of theology and religion, not a fact of what we call ecclesiastical politics.... The ecclesia itself, i. e., the sum of all its male members, is the primary body, and, it would seem, even the primary authority.... Of officers higher than elders we find nothing that points to an institution or system, nothing like the Episcopal system of later times.... The monarchical principle receives practical though limited recognition in the position ultimately held by St. James at Jerusalem, and in the temporary functions entrusted by St. Paul to Timothy and Titus.” On this last statement Bartlett, in Contemp. Rev., July, 1897, says that James held an unique position as brother of our Lord, while Paul left the communities organized by Timothy and Titus to govern themselves, when once their organization was set agoing. There was no permanent diocesan episcopate, in which one man presided over many churches. The ecclesiæ had for their officers only bishops and deacons.

Should not the majority rule in a Baptist church? No, not a bare majority, when there are opposing convictions on the part of a large minority. What should rule is the mind of the Spirit. What indicates his mind is the gradual unification of conviction and opinion on the part of the whole body in support of some definite plan, so that the whole church moves together. The large church has the advantage over the small church in that the single crotchety member cannot do so much harm. One man in a small boat can easily upset it, but not so in the great ship. Patient waiting, persuasion, and prayer, will ordinarily win over the recalcitrant. It is not to be denied, however, that patience may have its limits, and that unity may sometimes need to be purchased by secession and the forming of a new local church whose members can work harmoniously together.

(b) From the responsibility of the whole church for maintaining pure doctrine and practice.

1 Tim. 3:15—“the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth”; Jude 3—“exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”; Rev. 2 and 3—exhortations to the seven churches of Asia to maintain pure doctrine and practice. In all these passages, pastoral charges are given, not by a so‐called bishop to his subordinate priests, but by an apostle to the whole church and to all its members.

In 1 Tim. 3:15, Dr. Hort would translate “a pillar and ground of the truth”—apparently referring to the local church as one of many. Eph. 3:18—“strong to apprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.” Edith Wharton, Vesalius in Zante, in N. A. Rev., Nov. 1892—“Truth is many‐ tongued. What one man failed to speak, another finds Another word for. May not all converge, In some vast utterance of which you and I, Fallopius, were but the halting syllables?” Bruce, Training of the Twelve, shows that the Twelve probably knew the whole O. T. by heart. Pandita Ramabai, at Oxford, when visiting Max Müller, recited from the Rig Veda passim, and showed that she knew more of it by heart than the whole contents of the O. T.

(c) From the committing of the ordinances to the charge of the whole church to observe and guard. As the church expresses truth in her teaching, so she is to express it in symbol through the ordinances.

Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them ... teaching them”; cf. Luke 24:33—“_And they rose up that very hour ... found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with __ them_”; Acts 1:15—“And in these days Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren, and said (and there was a multitude of persons gathered together, about a hundred and twenty)”; 1 Cor. 15:6—“then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once”—these passages show that it was not to the eleven apostles alone that Jesus committed the ordinances.

1 Cor. 11:2—“Now I praise you that ye remember me in all things, and hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you”; cf. 23, 24—“for I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me”—here Paul commits the Lord’s Supper into the charge, not of the body of officials, but of the whole church. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, therefore, are not to be administered at the discretion of the individual minister. He is simply the organ of the church; and pocket baptismal and communion services are without warrant. See Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 299; Robinson, Harmony of Gospels, notes, § 170.

(d) From the election by the whole church, of its own officers and delegates. In Acts 14:23, the literal interpretation of χειροτονήσαντες is not to be pressed. In Titus 1:5, “when Paul empowers Titus to set presiding officers over the communities, this circumstance decides nothing as to the mode of choice, nor is a choice by the community itself thereby necessarily excluded.”

Acts 1:23, 26—“And they put forward two ... and they gave lots for them; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles”; 6:3, 5—“Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men of good report ... And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, ... and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus”—as deacons; Acts 13:2, 3—“And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, 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.”

On this passage, see Meyer’s comment: “ ‘Ministered’ here expresses the act of celebrating divine service on the part of the whole church. To refer αὐτῶν to the ‘prophets and teachers’ is forbidden by the ἀφορίσατε—and by verse 3. This interpretation would confine this most important mission‐act to five persons, of whom two were the missionaries sent; and the church would have had no part in it, even through its presbyters. This agrees, neither with the common possession of the Spirit in the apostolic church, nor with the concrete cases of the choice of an apostle (ch. 1) and of deacons (ch. 6). Compare 14:27, where the returned missionaries report to the church. The imposition of hands (verse 3) is by the presbyters, as representatives of the whole church. The subject in verses 2 and 3 is ‘the church’—(represented by the presbyters in this case). The church sends the missionaries to the heathen, and consecrates them through its elders.”

Acts 15:2, 4, 22, 30—“the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem.... And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and the apostles and the elders.... Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.... So they ... came down to Antioch; and having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle”; 2 Cor. 8:19—“who was also appointed by the churches to travel with us in the matter of this grace”—the contribution for the poor in Jerusalem; Acts 14:23—“And when they had appointed (χειροτονήσαντες) for them elders in every church”—the apostles announced the election of the church, as a College President confers degrees, i. e., by announcing degrees conferred by the Board of Trustees. To this same effect witnesses the newly discovered Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, chapter 15: “Appoint therefore for yourselves bishops and deacons.”

The derivation of χειροτονήσαντες, holding up of hands, as in a popular vote, is not to be pressed, any more than is the derivation of ἐκκλησία from καλέω. The former had come to mean simply “to appoint,” without reference to the manner of appointment, as the latter had come to mean an “assembly,” without reference to the calling of its members by God. That the church at Antioch “separated” Paul and Barnabas, and that this was not done simply by the five persons mentioned, is shown by the fact that, when Paul and Barnabas returned from the missionary journey, they reported not to these five, but to the whole church. So when the church at Antioch sent delegates to Jerusalem, the letter of the Jerusalem church is thus addressed: “The apostles and the elders, brethren, unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia” (Acts 15:23). The Twelve had only spiritual authority. They could advise, but they did not command. Hence they could not transmit government, since they had it not. They could demand obedience, only as they convinced their hearers that their word was truth. It was not they who commanded, but their Master.

Hackett, Com. on Acts—“χειροτονησαντες is not to be pressed, since Paul and Barnabas constitute the persons ordaining. It may possibly indicate a concurrent appointment, in accordance with the usual practice of universal suffrage; but the burden of proof lies on those who would so modify the meaning of the verb. The word is frequently used in the sense of choosing, appointing, with reference to the formality of raising the hand.” Per contra, see Meyer, in loco: “The church officers were elective. As appears from analogy of 6:2‐6 (election of deacons), the word χειροτονήσαντες retains its etymological sense, and does not mean ‘constituted’ or ‘created.’ Their choice was a recognition of a gift already bestowed,—not the ground of the office and source of authority, but merely the means by which the gift becomes [known, recognized, and] an actual office in the church.”

Baumgarten, Apostolic History, 1:456—“They—the two apostles—allow presbyters to be chosen for the community by voting.” Alexander, Com. on Acts—“The method of election here, as the expression χειροτονήσαντες indicates, was the same as that in Acts 6:5, 6, where the people chose the seven, and the twelve ordained them.” Barnes, Com. on Acts: “The apostles presided in the assembly where the choice was made,—appointed them in the usual way by the suffrage of the people.” Dexter, Congregationalism, 138—“ ‘Ordained’ means here ‘prompted and secured the election’ of elders in every church.” So in Titus 1:5—“appoint elders in every city.” Compare the Latin: “dictator consules creavit” = prompted and secured the election of consuls by the people. See Neander, Church History, 1:189; Guericke, Church History, 1:110; Meyer, on Acts 13:2.

The Watchman, Nov. 7, 1901—“The root‐difficulty with many schemes of statecraft is to be found in deep‐seated distrust of the capacities and possibilities of men. Wendell Phillips once said that nothing so impressed him with the power of the gospel to solve our problems as the sight of a prince and a peasant kneeling side by side in a European Cathedral.” Dr. W. R. Huntington makes the strong points of Congregationalism to be: 1. a lofty estimate of the value of trained intelligence in the Christian ministry; 2. a clear recognition of the duty of every lay member of a church to take an active interest in its affairs, temporal as well as spiritual. He regards the weaknesses of Congregationalism to be: 1. a certain incapacity for expansion beyond the territorial limits within which it is indigenous; 2. an undervaluation of the mystical or sacramental, as contrasted with the doctrinal and practical sides of religion. He argues for the object‐symbolism as well as the verbal‐symbolism of the real presence and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dread of idolatry, he thinks, should not make us indifferent to the value of sacraments. Baptists, we reply, may fairly claim that they escape both of these charges against ordinary Congregationalism, in that they have shown unlimited capacity of expansion, and in that they make very much of the symbolism of the ordinances.

(e) From the power of the whole church to exercise discipline. Passages which show the right of the whole body to exclude, show also the right of the whole body to admit, members.

Mat. 18:17—“And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican. Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”—words often inscribed over Roman Catholic confessionals, but improperly, since they refer not to the decisions of a single priest, but to the decisions of the whole body of believers guided by the Holy Spirit. In Mat. 18:17, quoted above, we see that the church has authority, that it is bound to take cognizance of offences, and that its action is final. If there had been in the mind of our Lord any other than a democratic form of government, he would have referred the aggrieved party to pastor, priest, or presbytery, and, in case of a wrong decision by the church, would have mentioned some synod or assembly to which the aggrieved person might appeal. But he throws all the responsibility upon the whole body of believers. Cf. Num. 15:35—“all the congregation shall stone him with stones”—the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day. Every Israelite was to have part in the execution of the penalty.

1 Cor. 5:4, 5, 13—“ye being gathered together ... to deliver such a one unto Satan.... Put away the wicked man from among yourselves”; 2 Cor. 2:6, 7—“Sufficient to such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the many; so that contrariwise ye should rather forgive him and comfort him”; 7:11—“For behold, this selfsame thing ... what earnest care it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves.... In every thing ye approved yourselves to be pure in the matter”; 2 Thess. 3:6, 14, 15—“_withdraw yourselves from every brother that __ walketh disorderly ... if any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle, note that man, that ye have no company with him, to the end that he may be ashamed. And yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother._” The evils in the church at Corinth were such as could exist only in a democratic body, and Paul does not enjoin upon the church a change of government, but a change of heart. Paul does not himself excommunicate the incestuous man, but he urges the church to excommunicate him.

The educational influence upon the whole church of this election of pastors and deacons, choosing of delegates, admission and exclusion of members, management of church finance and general conduct of business, carrying on of missionary operations and raising of contributions, together with responsibility for correct doctrine and practice, cannot be overestimated. The whole body can know those who apply for admission, better than pastors or elders can. To put the whole government of the church into the hands of a few is to deprive the membership of one great means of Christian training and progress. Hence the pastor’s duty is to develop the self‐government of the church. The missionary should not command, but advise. That minister is most successful who gets the whole body to move, and who renders the church independent of himself. The test of his work is not while he is with them, but after he leaves them. Then it can be seen whether he has taught them to follow him, or to follow Christ; whether he has led them to the formation of habits of independent Christian activity, or whether he has made them passively dependent upon himself.

It should be the ambition of the pastor not “to run the church,” but to teach the church intelligently and Scripturally to manage its own affairs. The word “minister” means, not master, but servant. The true pastor inspires, but he does not drive. He is like the trusty mountain guide, who carries a load thrice as heavy as that of the man he serves, who leads in safe paths and points out dangers, but who neither shouts nor compels obedience. The individual Christian should be taught: 1. to realize the privilege of church membership; 2. to fit himself to use his privilege; 3. to exercise his rights as a church member; 4. to glory in the New Testament system of church government, and to defend and propagate it.

A Christian pastor can either rule, or he can have the reputation of ruling; but he can not do both. Real ruling involves a sinking of self, a working through others, a doing of nothing that some one else can be got to do. The reputation of ruling leads sooner or later to the loss of real influence, and to the decline of the activities of the church itself. See Coleman, Manual of Prelacy and Ritualism, 87‐125; and on the advantages of Congregationalism over every other form of church‐polity, see Dexter, Congregationalism, 236‐296. Dexter, 290, note, quotes from Belcher’s Religious Denominations of the U. S., 184, as follows: “Jefferson said that he considered Baptist church government the only form of pure democracy which then existed in the world, and had concluded that it would be the best plan of government for the American Colonies. This was eight or ten years before the American Revolution.” On Baptist democracy, see Thomas Armitage, in N. Amer. Rev., March, 1887:232‐243.

John Fiske, Beginnings of New England: “In a church based upon such a theology [that of Calvin], there was no room for prelacy. Each single church tended to become an independent congregation of worshipers, constituting one of the most effective schools that has ever existed for training men in local self‐government.” Schurman, Agnosticism, 160—“The Baptists, who are nominally Calvinists, are now, as they were at the beginning of the century, second in numerical rank [in America]; but their fundamental principle—the Bible, the Bible only—taken in connection with their polity, has enabled them silently to drop the old theology and unconsciously to adjust themselves to the new spiritual environment.” We prefer to say that Baptists have not dropped the old theology, but have given it new interpretation and application; see A. H. Strong, Our Denominational Outlook, Sermon in Cleveland, 1904.

B. Erroneous views as to church government refuted by the foregoing passages.

(a) The world‐church theory, or the Romanist view.—This holds that all local churches are subject to the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter and the infallible vicegerent of Christ, and, as thus united, constitute the one and only church of Christ on earth. We reply:

First,—Christ gave no such supreme authority to Peter. Mat. 16:18, 19, simply refers to the personal position of Peter as first confessor of Christ and preacher of his name to Jews and Gentiles. Hence other apostles also constituted the foundation (Eph. 2:20; Rev. 21:14). On one occasion, the counsel of James was regarded as of equal weight with that of Peter (Acts 15:7‐30), while on another occasion Peter was rebuked by Paul (Gal. 2:11), and Peter calls himself only a fellow‐elder (1 Pet. 5:1).

Mat. 16:18, 19—“And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Peter exercised this power of the keys for both Jews and Gentiles, by being the first to preach Christ to them, and so admit them to the kingdom of heaven. The “rock” is a confessing heart. The confession of Christ makes Peter a rock upon which the church can be built. Plumptre on Epistles of Peter, Introd., 14—“He was a stone—one with that rock with which he was now joined by an indissoluble union.” But others come to be associated with him: Eph. 2:20—“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone”; Rev. 21:14—“And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Acts 15:7‐30—the Council of Jerusalem. Gal. 2:11—“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted him to the face, because he stood condemned”; 1 Pet. 5:1—“The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow‐ elder.”

Here it should be remembered that three things were necessary to constitute an apostle: (1) he must have seen Christ after his resurrection, so as to be a witness to the fact that Christ had risen from the dead; (2) he must be a worker of miracles, to certify that he was Christ’s messenger; (3) he must be an inspired teacher of Christ’s truth, so that his final utterances are the very word of God. In Rom. 16:7—“Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow‐prisoners, who are of note among the apostles” means simply: “who are highly esteemed among, or by, the apostles.” Barnabas is called an apostle, in the etymological sense of a messenger: Acts 13:2, 3—“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”; Heb. 3:1—“consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus.” In this latter sense, the number of the apostles was not limited to twelve.

Protestants err in denying the reference in Mat. 16:18 to Peter; Christ recognizes Peter’s personality in the founding of his kingdom. But Romanists equally err in ignoring Peter’s confession as constituting him the “rock.” Creeds and confessions alone will never convert the world; they need to be embodied in living personalities in order to save; this is the grain of correct doctrine in Romanism. On the other hand, men without a faith, which they are willing to confess at every cost, will never convert the world; there must be a substance of doctrine with regard to sin, and with regard to Christ as the divine Savior from sin; this is the just contention of Protestantism. Baptist doctrine combines the merits of both systems. It has both personality and confession. It is not hierarchical, but experiential. It insists, not upon abstractions, but upon life. Truth without a body is as powerless as a body without truth. A flag without an army is even worse than an army without a flag. Phillips Brooks: “The truth of God working through the personality of man has been the salvation of the world.” Pascal: “Catholicism is a church without a religion; Protestantism is a religion without a church.” Yes, we reply, if church means hierarchy.

Secondly,—If Peter had such authority given him, there is no evidence that he had power to transmit it to others.

Fisher, Hist. Christian Church, 247—“William of Occam (1280‐1347) composed a treatise on the power of the pope. He went beyond his predecessors in arguing that the church, since it has its unity in Christ, is not under the necessity of being subject to a single primate. He placed the Emperor and the General Council above the pope, as his judges. In matters of faith he would not allow infallibility even to the General Councils. ‘Only Holy Scripture and the beliefs of the universal church are of absolute validity.’ ” W. Rauschenbusch, in The Examiner, July 28, 1892—“The age of an ecclesiastical organization, instead of being an argument in its favor, is presumptive evidence against it, because all bodies organized for moral or religious ends manifest such a frightful inclination to become corrupt.... Marks of the true church are: present spiritual power, loyalty to Jesus, an unworldly morality, seeking and saving the lost, self‐sacrifice and self‐crucifixion.”

Romanism holds to a transmitted infallibility. The pope is infallible: 1. when he speaks as pope; 2. when he speaks for the whole church; 3. when he defines doctrine, or passes a final judgment; 4. when the doctrine thus defined is within the sphere of faith or morality; see Brandis, in N. A. Rev., Dec. 1892: 654. Schurman, Belief in God, 114—“Like the Christian pope, Zeus is conceived in the Homeric poems to be fallible as an individual, but infallible as head of the sacred convocation. The other gods are only his representatives and executives.” But, even if the primacy of the Roman pontiff were acknowledged, there would still be abundant proof that he is not infallible. The condemnation of the letters of Pope Honorius, acknowledging monothelism and ordering it to be preached, by Pope Martin I and the first Council of Lateran in 649, shows that both could not be right. Yet both were ex cathedra utterances, one denying what the other affirmed. Perrone concedes that only one error committed by a pope in an ex cathedra announcement would be fatal to the doctrine of papal infallibility.

Martineau, Seat of Authority, 139, 140, gives instances of papal inconsistencies and contradictions, and shows that Roman Catholicism does not answer to either one of its four notes or marks of a true church, viz.: 1. unity; 2. sanctity; 3. universality; 4. apostolicity. Dean Stanley had an interview with Pope Pius IX, and came away saying that the infallible man had made more blunders in a twenty minutes’ conversation than any person he had ever met. Dr. Fairbairn facetiously defines infallibility, as “inability to detect errors even where they are most manifest.” He speaks of “the folly of the men who think they hold God in their custody, and distribute him to whomsoever they will.” The Pope of Rome can no more trace his official descent from Peter than Alexander the Great could trace his personal descent from Jupiter.

Thirdly,—There is no conclusive evidence that Peter ever was at Rome, much less that he was bishop of Rome.

Clement of Rome refers to Peter as a martyr, but he makes no claim for Rome as the place of his martyrdom. The tradition that Peter preached at Rome and founded a church there dates back only to Dionysius of Corinth and Irenæus of Lyons, who did not write earlier than the eighth decade of the second century, or more than a hundred years after Peter’s death. Professor Lepsius of Jena submitted the Roman tradition to a searching examination, and came to the conclusion that Peter was never in Italy.

A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, 129—“Three unproved assumptions: 1. that Peter was primate; 2. that Peter was bishop of Rome; 3. that Peter was primate and bishop of Rome. The last is not unimportant; because Clement, for instance, might have succeeded to the bishopric of Rome without the primacy; as Queen Victoria came to the crown of England, but not to that of Hanover. Or, to come nearer home, Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States and husband of Mrs. Grant. Mr. Hayes succeeded him, but not in both capacities!”

On the question whether Peter founded the Roman Church, see Meyer, Com. on Romans, transl., vol. 1:23—“Paul followed the principle of not interfering with another apostle’s field of labor. Hence Peter could not have been laboring at Rome, at the time when Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans from Ephesus; cf. Acts 19:21; Rom. 15:20; 2 Cor. 10:16.” Meyer thinks Peter was martyred at Rome, but that he did not found the Roman church, the origin of which is unknown. “The Epistle to the Romans,” he says, “since Peter cannot have labored at Rome before it was written, is a fact destructive of the historical basis of the Papacy” (p. 28). See also Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 3:560.

Fourthly,—There is no evidence that he really did so appoint the bishops of Rome as his successors.

Denney, Studies in Theology, 191—“The church was first the company of those united to Christ and living in Christ; then it became a society based on creed; finally a society based on clergy.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 130—“The Holy Spirit is the real ‘Vicar of Christ.’ Would any one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is: The rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of the Vicar of Christ.” See also R. V. Littledale, The Petrine Claims.

The secret of Baptist success and progress is in putting truth before unity. James 3:17—“the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable.” The substitution of external for internal unity, of which the apostolic succession, so called, is a sign and symbol, is of a piece with the whole sacramental scheme of salvation. Men cannot be brought into the kingdom of heaven, nor can they be made good ministers of Jesus Christ, by priestly manipulation. The Frankish wholesale conversion of races, the Jesuitical putting of obedience instead of life, the identification of the church with the nation, are all false methods of diffusing Christianity. The claims of Rome need irrefragible proof, if they are to be accepted. But they have no warrant in Scripture or in history. Methodist Review: “As long as the Bible is recognized to be authoritative, the church will face Romeward as little as Leo X will visit America to attend a Methodist campmeeting, or Justin D. Fulton be elected as his successor in the Papal chair.” See Gore, Incarnation, 208, 209.

Fifthly,—If Peter did so appoint the bishops of Rome, the evidence of continuous succession since that time is lacking.

On the weakness of the argument for apostolic succession, see remarks with regard to the national church theory, below. Dexter, Congregationalism, 715—“To spiritualize and evangelize Romanism, or High Churchism, will be to Congregationalize it.” If all the Roman Catholics who have come to America had remained Roman Catholics, there would be sixteen millions of them, whereas there are actually only eight millions. If it be said that the remainder have no religion, we reply that they have just as much religion as they had before. American democracy has freed them from the domination of the priest, but it has not deprived them of anything but external connection with a corrupt church. It has given them opportunity for the first time to come in contact with the church of the New Testament, and to accept the offer of salvation through simple faith in Jesus Christ.

“Romanism,” says Dorner, “identifies the church and the kingdom of God. The professedly perfect hierarchy is itself the church, or its essence.” Yet Moehler, the greatest modern advocate of the Romanist system, himself acknowledges that there were popes before the Reformation “whom hell has swallowed up”; see Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., Introd., ad finem. If the Romanist asks: “Where was your church before Luther?” the Protestant may reply: “Where was your face this morning before it was washed?” Disciples of Christ have sometimes kissed the feet of Antichrist, but it recalls an ancient story. When an Athenian noble thus, in old times, debased himself to the King of Persia, his fellow‐citizens at Athens doomed him to death. See Coleman, Manual on Prelacy and Ritualism, 265‐274; Park, in Bib. Sac., 2:451; Princeton Rev., Apr., 1876:265.

Sixthly,—There is abundant evidence that a hierarchical form of church government is corrupting to the church and dishonoring to Christ.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 131‐140—“Catholic writers claim that the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ, is the only mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost. But the Spirit has been given to the church as a whole, that is, to the body of regenerated believers, and to every member of that body according to his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that it arrogates for a usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ’s mystical body. It is a suggestive fact that the name κλῆρος, ‘the charge allotted to you,’ which Peter gives to the church as ‘the flock of God’ (1 Pet. 5:2), when warning the elders against being lords over God’s heritage, now appears in ecclesiastical usage as ’the clergy,’ with its orders of pontiff and prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is to exercise lordship over Christ’s flock.... But committees and majorities may take the place of the Spirit, just as perfectly as a pope or a bishop.... This is the reason why the light has been extinguished in many a candlestick.... The body remains, but the breath is withdrawn. The Holy Spirit is the only Administrator.”

Canon Melville: “Make peace if you will with Popery, receive it into your Senate, enshrine it in your chambers, plant it in your hearts. But be ye certain, as certain as there is a heaven above you and a God over you, that the Popery thus honored and embraced is the Popery that was loathed and degraded by the holiest of your fathers; and the same in haughtiness, the same in intolerance, which lorded it over kings, assumed the prerogative of Deity, crushed human liberty, and slew the saints of God.” On the strength and weakness of Romanism, see Harnack, What is Christianity? 246‐263.

(b) The national‐church theory, or the theory of provincial or national churches.—This holds that all members of the church in any province or nation are bound together in provincial or national organization, and that this organization has jurisdiction over the local churches. We reply:

First,—the theory has no support in the Scriptures. There is no evidence that the word ἐκκλησία in the New Testament ever means a national church organization. 1 Cor. 12:28, Phil. 3:6, and 1 Tim. 3:15, may be more naturally interpreted as referring to the generic church. In Acts 9:31, ἐκκλησία is a mere generalization for the local churches then and there existing, and implies no sort of organization among them.

1 Cor. 12:28—“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues”; Phil. 3:6—“as touching zeal, persecuting the church”; 1 Tim. 3:15—“that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth”; Acts 9:31—“So the church throughout all Judæa and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified.” For advocacy of the Presbyterian system, see Cunningham, Historical Theology, 2:514‐556; McPherson, Presbyterianism. Per contra, see Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 9—“There is no example of a national church in the New Testament.”

Secondly,—It is contradicted by the intercourse which the New Testament churches held with each other as independent bodies,—for example at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts. 15:1‐35).

Acts 15:2, 6, 13, 19, 22—“the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.... And the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider of this matter.... James answered ... my judgment is, that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God ... it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.”

McGiffert, Apostolic Church, 645—“The steps of developing organization were: 1. Recognition of the teaching of the apostles as exclusive standard and norm of Christian truth; 2. Confinement to a specific office, the Catholic office of bishop, of the power to determine what is the teaching of the apostles; 3. Designation of a specific institution, the Catholic church, as the sole channel of divine grace. The Twelve, in the church of Jerusalem, had only a purely spiritual authority. They could advise, but they did not command. Hence they were not qualified to transmit authority to others. They had no absolute authority themselves.”

Thirdly,—It has no practical advantages over the Congregational polity, but rather tends to formality, division, and the extinction of the principles of self‐government and direct responsibility to Christ.

E. G. Robinson: “The Anglican schism is the most sectarian of all the sects.” Principal Rainey thus describes the position of the Episcopal Church: “They will not recognize the church standing of those who recognize them; and they only recognize the church standing of those, Greeks and Latins, who do not recognize them. Is not that an odd sort of Catholicity?” “Every priestling hides a popeling.” The elephant going through the jungle saw a brood of young partridges that had just lost their mother. Touched with sympathy he said: “I will be a mother to you,” and so he sat down upon them, as he had seen their mother do. Hence we speak of the “incumbent” of such and such a parish.

There were no councils that claimed authority till the second century, and the independence of the churches was not given up until the third or fourth century. In Bp. Lightfoot’s essay on the Christian Ministry, in the appendix to his Com. on Philippians, progress to episcopacy is thus described: “In the time of Ignatius, the bishop, then primus inter pares, was regarded only as a centre of unity; in the time of Irenæus, as a depositary of primitive truth; in the time of Cyprian, as absolute vicegerent of Christ in things spiritual.” Nothing is plainer than the steady degeneration of church polity in the hands of the Fathers. Archibald Alexander: “A better name than Church Fathers for these men would be church babies. Their theology was infantile.” Luther: “Never mind the Scribes,—what saith the Scripture?”

Fourthly,—It is inconsistent with itself, in binding a professedly spiritual church by formal and geographical lines.

Instance the evils of Presbyterianism in practice. Dr. Park says that “the split between the Old and the New School was due to an attempt on the part of the majority to impose their will on the minority.... The Unitarian defection in New England would have ruined Presbyterian churches, but it did not ruin Congregational churches. A Presbyterian church may be deprived of the minister it has chosen, by the votes of neighboring churches, or by the few leading men who control them, or by one single vote in a close contest.” We may illustrate by the advantage of the adjustable card‐catalogue over the old method of keeping track of books in a library.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 137, note—“By the candlesticks in the Revelation being seven, instead of one as in the tabernacle, we are taught that whereas, in the Jewish dispensation, God’s visible church was one, in the Gentile dispensation there are many visible churches, and that Christ himself recognizes them alike” (quoted from Garratt, Com. on Rev., 32). Bishop Moule, Veni Creator, 131, after speaking of the unity of the Spirit, goes on to say: “Blessed will it be for the church and for the world when these principles shall so vastly prevail as to find expression from within in a harmonious counterpart of order; a far different thing from what is, I cannot but think, an illusory prospect—the attainment of such internal unity by a previous exaction of exterior governmental uniformity.”

Fifthly,—It logically leads to the theory of Romanism. If two churches need a superior authority to control them and settle their differences, then two countries and two hemispheres need a common ecclesiastical government,—and a world‐church, under one visible head, is Romanism.

Hatch, in his Bampton Lectures on Organization of Early Christian Churches, without discussing the evidence from the New Testament, proceeds to treat of the post‐apostolic development of organization, as if the existence of a germinal Episcopacy very soon after the apostles proved such a system to be legitimate or obligatory. In reply, we would ask whether we are under moral obligation to conform to whatever succeeds in developing itself. If so, then the priests of Baal, as well as the priests of Rome, had just claims to human belief and obedience. Prof. Black: “We have no objection to antiquity, if they will only go back far enough. We wish to listen, not only to the fathers of the church, but also to the grandfathers.”

Phillips Brooks speaks of “the fantastic absurdity of apostolic succession.” And with reason, for in the Episcopal system, bishops qualified to ordain must be: (1) baptized persons; (2) not scandalously immoral; (3) not having obtained office by bribery; (4) must not have been deposed. In view of these qualifications, Archbishop Whately pronounces the doctrine of apostolic succession untenable, and declares that “there is no Christian minister existing now, who can trace up with complete certainty his own ordination, through perfectly regular steps, to the time of the apostles.” See Macaulay’s Review of Gladstone on Church and State, in his Essays, 4:166‐178. There are breaks in the line, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest part. See Presb. Rev., 1886:89‐126. Mr. Flanders called Phillips Brooks “an Episcopalian with leanings toward Christianity.” Bishop Brooks replied that he could not be angry with “such a dear old moth‐eaten angel.” On apostolic succession, see C. Anderson Scott, Evangelical Doctrine, 37‐48, 267‐288.

Apostolic succession has been called the pipe‐line conception of divine grace. To change the figure, it may be compared to the monopoly of communication with Europe by the submarine cable. But we are not confined to the pipe‐line or to the cable. There are wells of salvation in our private grounds, and wireless telegraphy practicable to every human soul, apart from any control of corporations.

We see leanings toward the world‐church idea in Pananglican and Panpresbyterian Councils. Human nature ever tends to substitute the unity of external organization for the spiritual unity which belongs to all believers in Christ. There is no necessity for common government, whether Presbyterian or Episcopal; since Christ’s truth and Spirit are competent to govern all as easily as one. It is a remarkable fact, that the Baptist denomination, without external bonds, has maintained a greater unity in doctrine, and a closer general conformity to New Testament standards, than the churches which adopt the principle of episcopacy, or of provincial organization. With Abp. Whately, we find the true symbol of Christian unity in “_the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of __ fruits_” (Rev. 22:2). Cf. John 10:16—γενήσονται μία ποίμνη, εἶς ποιμήν—“they shall become one flock, one shepherd” = not one fold, not external unity, but one flock in many folds. See Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 130; Dexter, Congregationalism, 236; Coleman, Manual on Prelacy and Ritualism, 128‐264; Albert Barnes, Apostolic Church.

As testimonies to the adequacy of Baptist polity to maintain sound doctrine, we quote from the Congregationalist, Dr. J. L. Withrow: “There is not a denomination of evangelical Christians that is throughout as sound theologically as the Baptist denomination. There is not an evangelical denomination in America to‐day that is as true to the simple plain gospel of God, as it is recorded in the word, as the Baptist denomination.” And the Presbyterian, Dr. W. G. T. Shedd, in a private letter dated Oct. 1, 1886, writes as follows: “Among the denominations, we all look to the Baptists for steady and firm adherence to sound doctrine. You have never had any internal doctrinal conflicts, and from year to year you present an undivided front in defense of the Calvinistic faith. Having no judicatures and regarding the local church as the unit, it is remarkable that you maintain such a unity and solidarity of belief. If you could impart your secret to our Congregational brethren, I think that some of them at least would thank you.”

A. H. Strong, Sermon in London before the Baptist World Congress, July, 1905—“Coöperation with Christ involves the spiritual unity not only of all Baptists with one another, but of all Baptists with the whole company of true believers of every name. We cannot, indeed, be true to our convictions without organizing into one body those who agree with us in our interpretation of the Scriptures. Our denominational divisions are at present necessities of nature. But we regret these divisions, and, as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth, we strive, at least in spirit, to rise above them. In America our farms are separated from one another by fences, and in the springtime, when the wheat and barley are just emerging from the earth, these fences are very distinguishable and unpleasing features of the landscape. But later in the season, when the corn has grown and the time of harvest is near, the grain is so tall that the fences are entirely hidden, and for miles together you seem to see only a single field. It is surely our duty to confess everywhere and always that we are first Christians and only secondly Baptists. The tie which binds us to Christ is more important in our eyes than that which binds us to those of the same faith and order. We live in hope that the Spirit of Christ in us, and in all other Christian bodies, may induce such growth of mind and heart that the sense of unity may not only overtop and hide the fences of division, but may ultimately do away with these fences altogether.”

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2. Officers of the Church

A. The number of offices in the church is two:—first, the office of bishop, presbyter, or pastor; and, secondly, the office of deacon.

(a) That the appellations “bishop,” “presbyter,” and “pastor” designate the same office and order of persons, may be shown from Acts 20:28—ἐπισκόπους ποιμαίνειν (cf. 17—πρεσβυτέρους); Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1, 8; Titus 1:5, 7; 1 Pet. 5:1, 2—πρεσβυτέρους ... παρακαλῶ ὁ συμπρεσβύτερος ... ποιμάνατε ποίμνιον ... ἐπισκοποῦντες. Conybeare and Howson: “The terms ‘bishop’ and ‘elder’ are used in the New Testament as equivalent,—the former denoting (as its meaning of overseer implies) the duties, the latter the rank, of the office.” See passages quoted in Gieseler, Church History, 1:90, note 1—as, for example, Jerome: “Apud veteres iidem episcopi et presbyteri, quia illud nomen dignitatis est, hoc ætatis. Idem est ergo presbyter qui episcopus.”

Acts 20:28—“Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops [marg. ‘overseers’], to feed [lit. ‘to shepherd,’ ‘be pastors of’] the church of the Lord which he purchased with his own blood”; cf. 17—“the elders of the church” are those whom Paul addresses as bishops or overseers, and whom he exhorts to be good pastors. Phil. 1:1—“bishops and deacons”; 1 Tim. 3:1, 8—“If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.... Deacons in like manner must be grave”; Tit. 1:5, 7—“appoint elders in every city.... For the bishop must be blameless”; 1 Pet. 5:1, 2—“The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow‐elder.... Tend [lit. ‘shepherd,’ ‘be pastors of’] the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight [acting as bishops], _not of constraint, but __ willingly, according to the will of God._” In this last passage, Westcott and Hort, with Tischendorf’s 8th edition, follow א and B in omitting ἐπισκοποῦντες. Tregelles and our Revised Version follow A and אc in retaining it. Rightly, we think; since it is easy to see how, in a growing ecclesiasticism, it should have been omitted, from the feeling that too much was here ascribed to a mere presbyter.

Lightfoot, Com. on Philippians, 95‐99—“It is a fact now generally recognized by theologians of all shades of opinion that in the language of the N. T. the same officer in the church is called indifferently ‘bishop’ (ἐπίσκοπος) and ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ (πρεσβύτερος).... To these special officers the priestly functions and privileges of the Christian people are never regarded as transferred or delegated. They are called stewards or messengers of God, servants or ministers of the church, and the like, but the sacerdotal is never once conferred upon them. The only priests under the gospel, designated as such in the N. T., are the saints, the members of the Christian brotherhood.” On Titus 1:5, 7—“appoint elders.... For the bishop must be blameless”—Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 150, remarks: “Here the word ‘for’ is quite out of place unless bishops and elders are identical. All these officers, bishops as well as deacons, are confined to the local church in their jurisdiction. The charge of a bishop is not a diocese, but a church. The functions are mostly administrative, the teaching office being subordinate, and a distinction is made between teaching elders and others, implying that the teaching function is not common to them all.”

Dexter, Congregationalism, 114, shows that bishop, elder, pastor are names for the same office: (1) from the significance of the words; (2) from the fact that the same qualifications are demanded from all; (3) from the fact that the same duties are assigned to all; (4) from the fact that the texts held to prove higher rank of the bishop do not support that claim. Plumptre, in Pop. Com., Pauline Epistles, 555, 556—“There cannot be a shadow of doubt that the two titles of Bishop and Presbyter were in the Apostolic Age interchangeable.”

(b) The only plausible objection to the identity of the presbyter and the bishop is that first suggested by Calvin, on the ground of 1 Tim. 5:17. But this text only shows that the one office of presbyter or bishop involved two kinds of labor, and that certain presbyters or bishops were more successful in one kind than in the other. That gifts of teaching and ruling belonged to the same individual, is clear from Acts 20:28‐31; Eph. 4:11; Heb. 13:7; 1 Tim. 3:2—ἐπίσκοπον διδακτικόν.

1 Tim. 5:17—“Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and in teaching”; Wilson, Primitive Government of Christian Churches, concedes that this last text “expresses a diversity in the exercise of the Presbyterial office, but not in the office itself”; and although he was a Presbyterian, he very consistently refused to have any ruling elders in his church.

Acts 20:28, 31—“bishops, to feed the church of the Lord ... wherefore watch ye”; Eph. 4:11—“and some, pastors and teachers”—here Meyer remarks that the single article binds the two words together, and prevents us from supposing that separate offices are intended. Jerome: “Nemo ... pastoris sibi nomen assumere debet, nisi possit docere quos pascit.” Heb. 13:7—“Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you the word of God”; 1 Tim. 3:2—“The bishop must be ... apt to teach.” The great temptation to ambition in the Christian ministry is provided against by having no gradation of ranks. The pastor is a priest, only as every Christian is. See Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 56; Olshausen, on 1 Tim. 5:17; Hackett on Acts 14:23; Presb. Rev., 1886:89‐126.

Dexter, Congregationalism, 52—“Calvin was a natural aristocrat, not a man of the people like Luther. Taken out of his own family to be educated in a family of the nobility, he received an early bent toward exclusiveness. He believed in authority and loved to exercise it. He could easily have been a despot. He assumed all citizens to be Christians until proof to the contrary. He resolved church discipline into police control. He confessed that the eldership was an expedient to which he was driven by circumstances, though after creating it he naturally enough endeavored to procure Scriptural proof in its favor.” On the question, The Christian Ministry, is it a Priesthood? see C. Anderson Scott, Evangelical Doctrine, 205‐224.

(c) In certain of the N. T. churches there appears to have been a plurality of elders (Acts 20:17; Phil. 1:1; Tit. 1:5). There is, however, no evidence that the number of elders was uniform, or that the plurality which frequently existed was due to any other cause than the size of the churches for which these elders cared. The N. T. example, while it permits the multiplication of assistant pastors according to need, does not require a plural eldership in every case; nor does it render this eldership, where it exists, of coördinate authority with the church. There are indications, moreover, that, at least in certain churches, the pastor was one, while the deacons were more than one, in number.

Acts 20:17—“And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church”; Phil. 1:1—“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons”; Tit. 1:5—“For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that were wanting, and appoint elders in every city, as I gave thee charge.” See, however, Acts 12:17—“Tell these things unto James, and to the brethren”; 15:13—“And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Brethren, hearken unto me”; 21:18—“And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present”; Gal. 1:19—“But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother”; 2:12—“certain came from James.” These passages seem to indicate that James was the pastor or president of the church at Jerusalem, an intimation which tradition corroborates.

1 Tim. 3:2—“The bishop therefore must be without reproach”; Tit. 1:7—“For the bishop must be blameless, as God’s steward”; cf. 1 Tim. 3:8, 10, 12—“Deacons in like manner must be grave.... And let these also first be proved; then let them serve as deacons, if they be blameless.... Let deacons be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well”—in all these passages the bishop is spoken of in the singular number, the deacons in the plural. So, too, in Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18 and 3:1, 7, 14, “the angel of the church” is best interpreted as meaning the pastor of the church; and, if this be correct, it is clear that each church had, not many pastors, but one.

It would, moreover, seem antecedently improbable that every church of Christ, however small, should be required to have a plural eldership, particularly since churches exist that have only a single male member. A plural eldership is natural and advantageous, only where the church is very numerous and the pastor needs assistants in his work: and only in such cases can we say that New Testament example favors it. For advocacy of the theory of plural eldership, see Fish, Ecclesiology, 229‐249; Ladd, Principles of Church Polity, 22‐29. On the whole subject of offices in the church, see Dexter, Congregationalism, 77‐98; Dagg, Church Order, 241‐266; Lightfoot on the Christian Ministry, appended to his Commentary on Philippians, and published in his Dissertations on the Apostolic Age.

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