Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
Christian hearts are more than a match for the somewhat narrow Christian
head.
§ 6. The Church of the Mustard-seed.
This is not the spirit, but the body; not the life, but the organization
of that life. There is no doubt that we need a Church visible as well as a
Church invisible; need a body as well as a soul; and it is a very
important question what sort of a body we shall have. Soul, no doubt, is
infinitely more important than body; still we do not wish our body to be
lame, blind, or dyspeptic. Because soul is better than body, we do not
like rheumatism or neuralgia. Our visible Church, the body of Christ, is
sometimes a little dyspeptic, and goes about looking very gloomy and
miserable, when it ought to be as gay as a lark. Sometimes also it seems
to be rheumatic; at any rate, it cannot go and attend to its work. It is
very subject to fever and ague; plenty of meetings to-day, all alive with
zeal and heat, but to-morrow it is cold and shivering. It has its
pulmonary disease too; its lungs are not strong enough to speak when it
ought; to cry out for truth and right in the day of trial. And as we find
that hygienics are better than therapeutics for physical diseases, so,
perhaps, it will be better for us to prevent the diseases of the Church by
wise arrangements, which shall give it air, exercise, and a wholesome
diet, than to cure it, when sick, by the usual medicine of rebuke,
reproof, and ascetic mortification.
The visible Church may be looked at in four points of view. We may
consider it as,—
1. The Primitive Church, or Church as it was.
2. The Church Actual, or Church as it is.
3. The Ideal Church, or Church as it ought to be.
4. The Possible Church, or Church as it can be.
§ 7. Primitive and Apostolic Church, or Church as it was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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