The War and Unity | Page 5

relation to God was
associated with great assemblies in the courts and precincts of the
temple at Jerusalem, which altogether overshadowed any expression of
their covenant relation to God as a people which they could find in
their synagogue-worship, however greatly they valued the bonds with
one another which were strengthened, and the spiritual help which they
obtained, through their synagogues. But Christians had no single,
central meeting-place for their common worship at which their ideal

unity was embodied. It was, therefore, all the more natural that the
exalted name which described that unity should be transferred to the
communities in different places which shared the life, the privileges,
and the responsibilities of the whole, and in many ways stood to those
who composed them severally for the whole. The divisions between
these communities were local only. They arose from the limitations to
intercourse and common action which distance imposed. Or, in cases
where the Church in some Christian's house is referred to, they were
due to the necessity, or the great convenience, of meeting in small
numbers, owing to the want of buildings for Christian worship, or the
hostility of the surrounding population. Moreover these local bodies
were not suffered to forget the ties which bound them all together.
Those in the Greek-speaking world were required to send alms to the
Churches in Judæa. Again an individual Church was not free to
disregard the judgment of the rest. After St Paul has reasoned with the
Corinthians on the subject of a practice which he deemed inexpedient,
he clinches the matter by declaring, "we have no such custom neither
the Churches of God[12]." Lastly, the Apostles, and preeminently St
Paul, through their mission which, if not world-wide, at least extended
over large districts, and the care of the Churches which they exercised,
and the authority which they claimed in the name of Christ, and which
was conceded to them, were a unifying power.
Thus the plural "the Churches" has in important respects a different
connotation in the New Testament from that which it has in modern
times. In the Apostolic Age the distinction between the Church and the
Churches is connected only with the different degrees to which a
common life could be realised according to geographical proximity. By
a division of this nature the idea of One Universal Church was not
compromised. The local body of Christians in point of fact rightly
regarded itself as representative of the whole body. The Christians in
that place were the Church so far as it extended there.
The preservation of unity within the Church of each place where it was
imperilled by rivalries and jealousies and misunderstandings, such as
are too apt to shew themselves when men are in close contact with one
another, and of unity between the Churches of regions remote from one

another, in which case the sense of it is likely to be weak through want
of knowledge and consequently of sympathy--these appear as
twin-aims severally pursued in the manner that each required. Not
indeed that it is implied that everything is to be sacrificed to unity. But
it is demanded that the most strenuous endeavours shall be made to
maintain it, and it appears to be assumed that without any breach of it,
loyalty to every other great principle, room for the rightful exercise of
every individual gift, recognition of every aspect of Divine truth the
perception of which may be granted to one or other member of the
body, can be secured, if Christians cultivate right dispositions of mutual
affection and respect.
There is one more point in regard to the idea of the Church in the New
Testament as to which we must not suffer ourselves to be misled, or
confused, by later conceptions and our modern habits of thought. We
have become accustomed to a distinction between the Church Visible
and the Church Invisible which makes of them two different entities.
According to this, one man who is a member of the Church Visible
may at the same time, if he is a truly spiritual person, even while here
on earth belong to the Church Invisible; but another who has a place in
the Church Visible has none and it may be never will have one in the
Church Invisible. This conception, though it had appeared here and
there before the 16th century, first obtained wide vogue then under the
influence of the Protestant Reformation.
It arose through a very natural reaction from the mechanical view of
membership in the Church, its conditions and privileges, which had
grown up in the Middle Ages. But it does not correspond to the ideas of
the Apostolic Age. According to these there is but one Church, the
same as to its true being on earth as it is in