Original Paper. THE ESSENTIAL UNITY OF THE CHURCH. BY THE REV. PROFESSOR GIBSON, MODERATOR OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF IRELAND.* THE Church of Christ has now fulfilled a course of almost two thousand years. Through all this period she has been the one grand revelation of the glory of the Supreme Jehovah, the earthly dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost, the pillar and ground of the truth. Her exalted Head, according to His promise, has been always with her. He has never surrendered her to the malice of her foes nor to the treachery or weakness of her friends. She has suffered mournful debasement without the entire loss of her Divine glory. She has borne shameful corruption without entire defilement. She has fallen on the quicksands of error without total shipwreck of the faith. A heavenly light has been her guide, and a heavenly power her support. In a clime unwholesome to her life and unfriendly to her influence, she withstands the constant action of elements which none but a Divine constitution can resist. The law of life in the Church reveals itself partly in jealousy for the truth, and the search for truth employs no small portion of her intellectual power. In the exercise of this power the several classes of minds which are consecrated to her service produce considerable diversity among themselves, and thus forms of thought become various, trains of reasoning diverge, conclusions from the same premises become mutually contradictory, and Christians present an aspect of disagreement and division, at first sight hardly reconcilable with unity of faith and of communion. Yet, through all the fluctuations of religious faith and practice, the unity of the Church has been held with unvarying constancy. Not only has the doctrine been asserted as one of the essential verities of revelation, but with every true believer it has been experimentally felt and realised. No one whose Christianity is genuine can read the histories of holy men, written by inspiration, or peruse those compositions which delineate the characters of such as have lived and died in the faith of the Gospel, without identifying himself with the sainted individuals who have been thus brought before him. His moral sympathies connect him indissolubly with the true members of that Church in every age of the world, and the scattered records of the earthly experience of the glorified, with which he is conversant, enable him to realise a closer and a more intimate fellowship with the general assembly in heaven. And the same ties which bind him to those who have fallen asleep in Jesus unite him even more consciously to those in the body, with whom he is daily associated in works of faith and labours of love. There is thus an identity of principle and a sympathy of feeling which constitute an inviolable bond of fellowship between the several members of the household of faith, and which verify and illustrate the inspired declaration-" Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it." It may not be unseasonable, on an occasion like the present, if, instead of descanting on the objects and advantages of such an organisation as that on the basis of which we are assembled, we take the opportunity to exhibit, in a very condensed form, the doctrine of the Church's unity, as held forth in those memorable words of the intercessory prayer of our blessed Lord-" Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one: that the world may * Delivered at the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, at Belfast, on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1859. VOL. XIII.-OCTOBER. FF ORIGINAL PAPER. believe that Thou hast sent me." In this outpouring of His heart by the Divine Redeemer, the first point challenging our attention is, that all believers constitute one body, which is the Church: A believer, in the New Testament acceptation of the term, is one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God-this single doctrine being once and again given as the all-comprehending article of Christian faith. It was the chief labour of Jesus with His disciples, who, as Jews, already believed in God, to make them believe also in Him-that is, to direct upon himself whatever of reverence, love, and trust they entertained for God; and when He had accomplished this He spake His joy in grateful acknowledgment to the Father that His work was done-"Now they have known that all things whatsoever Thou hast given me are of Thee. For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send me.” This substance of true and Christian faith has its intellectual and moral conditions, distinct from faith itself, and not to be confounded with it. Faith implies knowledge. Belief in Jesus as the Son of God without a knowledge of God at all would be absurd. Yet any conception of God involving the notions of supreme authority, power, and glory, is a sufficient intellectual basis for faith in Jesus as the Son of God. The primary act of Christian faith is nothing else than the transfer of the known attributes of God to Jesus Christ. It is done by the Holy Spirit; but its only intellectual pre-requisite is some just conception of God as an act of obedience, trust, and worship. Hence degrees of knowledge in true believers vary indefinitely, while this one intellectual characteristic, and this one only, is of necessity common to all-the idea of the true God as supreme in power and glory, and the appropriation of the supremacy to Christ-"To know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." The other intellectual views of believers will vary with their capacity, education, and general intelligence. To one fully instructed in the Hebrew theology, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God draws after it all the Old Testament ideas of Divine majesty and sovereignty, of Divine law and punishment, of sin, of atonement, of pardon, of reward and punishment, and all the prophetic doctrines concerning the reign and person of the Messiah. To one learned in the New Testament, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God brings with it those ideas of filial subordination, endearment, and honour, which are revealed of Him in the Gospel-His equality with God, His personal mystery as God and man, His atonement by suffering and death, His mediatorial supremacy in the Church, regeneration, justification by faith, resurrection, the day of judgment, and eternal retribution. To one skilled in reasoning on the nature of things, and in minute and precise theological distinctions, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God involves some theory of Divine filiation, some theory of the sufferings of Christ, and of the nature and extent of the atonement, and so on, as far as the abilities or the opportunities of the believer enable him to pursue his scientific investigations. Now, it is far from being a matter of indifference to the interests of religion in the world, to the completeness and stability of the Christian character, and the reputation of the Church, whether believers hold one of these theories or another. But how much soever more of theological correctness or of tendency to edification, any one of them may have more than another, a man may make an entire surrender of his soul to Christ, which is the essence of true faith, and be saved without any of them. As to the degree of knowledge, it may be indefinitely small; as to the kind, it must embrace Jesus as the Son of God. As to the moral conditions of faith, enough to say in this connexion, that it works by love, and is the operation of the Holy Spirit. There are many impressions of the extraordinary character of Jesus, which do not rise to the conviction of his being the Son of God. The woman of Samaria could say "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." Nicodemus could say "We know that thou art a ORIGINAL PAPER. teacher come from God." Conclusions like these might be suggested by mere natural reason, or by the works of Christ; but when Peter confessed the Saviour to be the Son of God, Jesus immediately answered that flesh and blood had not revealed this unto him, but His Father who was in heaven. The distinction between the Church visible and the Church invisible has been adopted as a convenient mode of denoting the difference between the Church in the earthly and temporal section of her history, and the Church universal and perpetual, as the body of Christ. The distinction is a mere accommodation of thought and language to a part of the facts presented by the kingdom of Christ, in its transient relation to space and time. It arises from the impossibility of producing an invariable coincidence between the apparent and the real limits of the Church. What we see of the Church in time and space we call the visible Church. The Church invisible embraces all and only those who truly believe in Jesus, and who have been, are, and shall be the subjects of His saving grace. As the visibility of the Church arises from its invisible nature, the visible Church, like the invisible, is one. All who profess faith in Jesus Christ become the apparent constituents of the one Church, the body of Christ; and, however various in appearance, they form, in fact, one vast communion. However individuals may group together in separate bands for local convenience, or by a perverse tenacity, the pervading law of unity remains irresistible and unbroken. That it must for ever so remain will appear more fully if we notice the nature and ground of this unity. "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." Our conception of the personal relations in Godhead thus becomes an illustration of our personal and mutual relations in the Church. There is a mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son. They are one, not only as having the same substance, but the same spirit. The Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of the Father, but the Spirit of the Son. He belongs to both, and proceeds from both. Both the Father and the Son are said to dwell in believers, because they are temples of the Holy Ghost. The members of Christ's body are partakers of the Divine nature, because partakers of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost, therefore, as equally the Spirit of the Father and the Son, is, so to speak, one of the bonds of unity between them. In other words, that particular form of unity between the Father and the Son, which arises from the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of both, is held up as a model of the unity of Christians with God and with one another. The Spirit is in the Church what He is in the Godhead. In God He is the personal form of truth and love combined by the inscrutable laws of the life of God, with all those other attributes by which truth and love can make themselves known-the indwelling principle and the outpouring agent of moral power and glory. When He comes forth ́ from His one source, the Father and the Son, it is to give His Divine nature, as the moral agent of the universe, a new creating, enlightening, and comforting manifestation in the Church. He becomes in the Church the moral life of God; the Spirit of all grace in all believers; working in them severally as He will. The ground of Christian unity, then, is the Spirit of God. He makes unity where He dwells from eternity. He makes unity where He works in time. It is but a superficial view that we take of the unity of the Church if we consider it as grounded on sameness of faith, or likeness of character, or the mutual love and harmony of the members. These, when they exist, are not the grounds of unity, but its fruits and signs. The Church is one because of its indwelling Spirit; and from this one Spirit the outward conformity of the members must arise. Then let us mark the value of this unity to the credit of Christianity and its progress in the world. "That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me"-in which words we see our Lord aiming in His prayer at the propagation of His religion and the final triumph of His kingdom through one of the obvious aids of such a work—the unity of the Church; and thus disclosing His purpose that the unity of that Church shall be a ORIGINAL PAPER. condition of its universality. He challenges attention to a unity which, having been inwardly created, shall be outwardly expressed. He demands a visible unity. By what visible form, then, is the unity of the Church to commend to mankind the faith of the Church? We answer-the appearance of unity must correspond with the reality-as the Church is one in fact, she must become one in manifestation. It is, therefore, something to the purpose when Christians acknowledge their unity in words, and assert for all believers a mutual fraternal relation, and thus recognise a reasonable ground for mutual love. Nor is it a feeble testimony to the great inward law of spiritual unity that the hearts of all pious people prompt them, as reason binds them, to this acknowledgment. It is farther to the purpose when Christians recognise the bond of unity, notwithstanding doctrinal diversities, local prejudices, nominal distinctions, and sectarian rivalries and conflicts. But all this is a superficial virtue drawn over a deeper vice. It pre-supposes the want of that very thing by which the true aspect of unity must be formed. Our strenuous assertions of unity betray our fault. The building fitly framed together, with due proportions, and such a unity of plan that every part contributes to one result, needs not to be labelled all over with notices that the building is one and not many. Its unity is known and read of all men. The hint of such a notice for information would be ridiculous. We are not conscious of throwing any obloquy on the Gospel when we admit that, among its nominal adherents, there is a lamentable want of the spirit of unity. Notwithstanding the strong affinity which is said to exist between Christians, and to bind them to each other, the society which they form does not seem a compacted body. The stones in that spiritual temple which is formed out of the ruins of humanity in so far as the structure is visible in the present world, appear to sit but loosely together. As members of the same family, professing Christians are often at variance with each other. As associated by neighbourhood and acquaintance, their intercourse and reciprocated acts of kindness are ever and anon suspended, and give place to alienation and uncharitable detraction. As forming the same worshipping assembly, they are, for the most part, unknown to each other; and though from week to week uttering the same prayers, and singing with blended voices the same Divine songs, and listening to the same instructor, they never seek a greater intimacy nor a closer fellowship. As citizens, they allow questions which, for the most part, derive their importance from worldly considerations and interests, to extinguish the fervent charity which they ought ever to have among themselves. And as separate communions, holding different views on matters of detail, and bearing distinctive names, they often seem to wrench from each other's breasts the last remaining feeling of brotherly kindness and affection by the way in which they conduct their protracted disputes. Such discord in the commonwealth of Israel cannot fail to have a most injurious influence on the views of those who are still aliens from it citizenship. On the minds and interests of Christians themselves the effects of disunion ar disastrous in the extreme. They keep asunder those who, in all the weightie matters of religious belief and practice-in governing aims, in celestial aspiration an destiny-are in reality one. They check the growth and expansion of that charit in which the Divine law is summed up, which, associated, as it ever is, with truth an holiness beyond all other virtues, renders the human soul heavenly and divine in i character. They call into existence whole broods of petty controversialists, eager to ear their little laurels on the troubled arena of ecclesiastical strife, and who estimate the claims to an ephemeral distinction by the amount of enjoyment they can disturb an of pain they can inflict. By magnifying and multiplying causes of difference; distorted and exaggerated representations of the principles and characters of opp nents; by the formation of lines of defence and engines of assault, the Chur ORIGINAL PAPER. of Christ is made to resemble a country broken and ravaged by civil war, partitioned amid hostile chiefs, each with his band of military partizans dwelling within separate fastnesses, and surrounded by neglected fields or dreary wastes. Doubtless, there are many of purer and higher nature who sigh in secret over this calamitous scene, and often exclaim with the afflicted Psalmist, "Woe is me that I dwell in Mesech and sojourn in the tents of Kedar: my soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace"-holding communion with the saints of every name, and cheering their spirits with the blessed assurance that this unnatural state of things in the Church of the Redeemer is only for a season, that these wars shall cease to the end of the carth, and that "the untroubled Kingdom" shall yet come. What, then, is to be done to mitigate the existing evil? We answer without hesitation, first cultivate the sense of unity to the utmost. This Divine sentiment cannot have too strong development in any Christian, under any circumstances. While we reason out the doctrine from the words of our Lord, or infer it from the dwelling of the Holy Ghost within us, let us so bear it in our thoughts in communion with God, and with all Christians, that it shall become one of our fixed and ever-present ideas. It is evident that our habitual thoughts on this subject do not agree with the fact of our spiritual unity. Correction must begin here. Conventions for co-operation in a scheme or two of religious enterprise, as an annual and local demonstration of unity, do indeed give indication of an inward want to be supplied by some outward accommodation. But this is only covering division-not removing it. Let us also bear in mind that we are all in our respective measures responsible to the Lord for the visible integrity of His Church. The ecclesiastical divisions of the Christian world spring, not from the true liberty of thought and speech wherewith Christ makes His people free, but from the vague presumption that diversity of theological opinion must work a corresponding diversity of ecclesiastical order, and show itself in external disintegration. Schism becomes the condition of enjoying one's own opinions. A peculiar opinion on almost any subject is deemed more important than Christian union, and incompatible with it. Every doctrine is conceived to be, or to involve, fundamental truth; the difference becomes a grave matter of conscience; dispute kindles passion; parties dissent even more in feeling than in fact; and the movements spurn the guidance of Christian principle, and follow the natural artifices and passions of men. This is the mode on which the Church has fallen; but the day, we trust, is coming when the Holy Spirit, the one living soul of the Church, shall control the organisation and all the motions of the body; and when the unity of this Divine soul shall give singleness to the eye of the body, and shine forth with commanding splendour from every feature of the face. Meanwhile, let it be remembered that whatever impairs the Church's internal sanctity, and spreads among her members a spirit alien to that of the Gospel, must paralyse her energies and disqualify her from the work of vanquishing the world. Were all the members of the Christian community closely knit together by the sympathy which arises out of the common possession of vigorous spiritual life, their collective strength would not only be exerted, but exerted judiciously and effectively, for the conversion of the nations; and the firm union of believers would warrant-nay, compelthe conclusion, that what Christianity has accomplished is but the earnest of a future age, when its doctrines shall be believed, and its precepts shall be obeyed, and its ordinances shall be observed, and its Divine songs shall be sung, and its celestial spirit shall be breathed by every section of the scattered family of man-when its triumphs shall extend from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. In order to the accomplishment in any approximate degree of results so glorious, it is necessary there should be union in prayer as well as in active efforts. United intercession would of itself be an unequivocal indication of the Divine will, for it could only result from |