The War and Unity | Page 4

had been slower than he to perceive what vital principles were at
stake. Believers of both classes must join in the Christian Agapæ, or
love-feasts, and must partake of the same Eucharist, because the many
are one loaf[1], one body. They must grasp, and give practical effect to,
the principle that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free,

neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus[2]."
For that society, or organism, into which Jewish and Gentile believers
were alike brought, a name was found; it was that of Ecclesia,
translated Church. It will be worth our while to spend a few moments
on the use of this name and its significance. We find mention in the
New Testament of "the Church" and of "Churches." What is the
relation between the singular term and the plural historically, and what
did the distinction import? The sublime passages concerning the
Church as the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ occur in the Epp.
to the Colossians and Ephesians[3], which are not among the early
Pauline Epistles. Nevertheless in comparatively early Epistles, the
authorship of which by St Paul himself is rarely disputed, there are
expressions which seem plainly to shew that he thought of the Church
as a single body to which all who had been baptized in the Name of
Jesus Christ belonged. In the Epp. to the Galatians and 1 Corinthians[4]
he refers to the fact that he persecuted the "Church of God," and his
persecution was not confined to believers in Jerusalem or even in
Judæa, but extended to adjacent regions. He might have spoken of "the
Churches of Syria," as he does elsewhere (using the plural) of those of
Judæa, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia[5]. But he prefers to speak of the
Church, and he describes it as "the Church of God." The impiety of his
action thus appeared in its true light. He had not merely attacked certain
local associations, but that sacred body--"the Church of God." Again, it
is evident that he is thinking of a society embracing believers
everywhere when he writes to the Corinthians concerning different
forms of ministry, "God placed some in the Church, first Apostles,
secondarily prophets" and so forth[6]. Again, when he bids the
Corinthians, "Give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews or to
Greeks, or to the Church of God[7]," or asks them whether they
"despise the Church of God[8]," although it was their conduct to
brethren among whom they lived that was especially in question, it is
evident that, as in the case of his own action as a persecutor, the gravity
of the fault can in his view only be truly measured when it is realised
that each individual Church is a representative of the Church Universal.
This representative character of local Churches also appears in the
expression common in his Epistles, the "Church in" such and such a

place.
The usage of St Paul's Epistles does not, therefore, encourage the idea
that the application of the term ecclesia to particular associations
preceded its application to the whole body, but the contrary, and plainly
it expressed for him from the first a most sublime conception. I may
add that there is no reason to suppose that the use of the term originated
with him. We find it in the Gospel according to St Matthew, the Epistle
of St James and the Apocalypse of St John, writings which shew no
trace of his influence.
There is no passage of the New Testament from which it is possible to
infer clearly the idea which underlay its application to believers in
Jesus Christ. But when it is considered how full of the Old Testament
the minds of the first generation of Christians were, it must appear to be
in every way most probable that the word ecclesia suggested itself
because it is the one most frequently employed in the Greek translation
of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) to render the Hebrew word
k[macron a]h[macron a]l, the chief term used for the assembly of Israel
in the presence of God, gathered together in such a manner and for such
purposes as forced them to realise their distinctive existence as a people,
and their peculiar relation to God. The believers in Jesus now formed
the ecclesia of God, the true Israel, which in one sense was a
continuation of the old and yet had taken its place. This was the view
put forward by Dr Hort in his lectures on the Christian Ecclesia[9], and
it is at the present time widely, I believe I may say generally, held. I
may mention that the eminent German Church historians, A.
Harnack[10] and Sohm[11], give it without hesitation as the true one.
Among the Jews the thought of the people in its