Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. JohnMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Ephesians -- Commentaries; Bible. Epistle of John, 1st -- Commentaries; Bible. Peter -- Commentaries
Surely that is the true test of a living Church. 'When Barnabas came,
and saw the grace of God, he was glad.' It was not what he had expected,
but he was open to conviction. The Church where he saw it had been very
irregularly constituted; it had no orders and no sacraments, and had
been set a-going by the spontaneous efforts of private Christians, and
he came to look into the facts. He asked for nothing more when he saw
that the converts had the life within them. And so we, with all our
faults--and God forbid that I should seem to minimise these--with all
our faults, we poor Nonconformists, left to the uncovenanted mercies,
have our share of that gift of grace as truly, and, if our love be
deeper, more abundantly, than the Churches that are blessed with orders
and sacraments, and an 'unbroken historical continuity.' And when we
are unchurched for our lack of these, let us fall back upon St.
Augustine's 'Where Christ is, there the Church is'; and believe that to
us, even to us also, the promise is fulfilled, 'Lo! I am with you
always, even to the end of the world.'
III. Lastly, note the width to which our sympathies should go.
The Apostle sends out his desires and prayers so as to encircle the same
area as the grace of God covers and as His love enfolds. And we are
bound to do the same.
I am not going to talk about organic unity. The age for making new
denominations is, I suppose, about over. I do not think that any sane
man would contemplate starting a new Church nowadays. The rebound from
the iron rigidity of a mechanical unity that took place at the
Reformation naturally led to the multiplication of communities, each of
which laid hold of something that to it seemed important. The folly of
ecclesiastical rulers who insisted upon non-essentials lays the guilt of
the schism at _their_ doors, and not at the doors of the minority who
could not, in conscience, accept that which never should have been
insisted upon as a condition. But whilst we must all feel that power is
lost, and much evil ensues from the isolation, such as it is, of the
various Churches, yet we must remember that re-union is a slow process;
that an atmosphere springs up round each body which is a very subtle,
but none the less a very powerful, force, and that it will take a very,
very long time to overcome the difficulties and to bring about any
reconstruction on a large scale. But why should there be three
Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, with the same creed, confessions of
faith, and ecclesiastical constitution? Why should there be half a dozen
Methodist bodies in England, of whom substantially the same thing may
be said? Will it always pass the wit of man for Congregationalists and
Baptists to be one body, without the sacrifice of conviction upon either
side? Surely no! You young men may see these fair days; men like me can
only hope that they will come and do a little, such as may be possible
in a brief space, to help them on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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