The War and Unity | Page 6

heaven, one Body of Christ,
composed of believers in Him who had been taken to their rest and of
those still in this world. In the earlier part of the Apostolic Age the
great majority were in fact still in this world. The Body was chiefly a
Visible Body. It had many imperfections. Some of its members might
even have no true part in it at all and require removal. But Christ
Himself "sanctifies and cleanses it that He may present it"--that very
same Church--"to Himself a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle

or any such thing, but holy and without blemish[13]."
Now while one can understand the point of view from which in later
times so deep a line of demarcation has been drawn between the
Visible and the Invisible Church as to make of them two entirely
separate things, and although to many it may still seem hard to do
without this distinction, or in the existing condition of the nominally
Christian world to employ that primitive conception of the Church even
as, so to speak, a working hypothesis, I would ask whether the
primitive conception is not a nobler and sounder one. Surely it places
the ideal in its right relation to the actual. The full realisation of the
ideal no doubt belongs only to another world; yet if we believe in it as
an ideal we must seek to actualise it here. There is something
unwholesome in acknowledging any ideal which we do not strive so far
as we can to actualise. And plainly participation in the same grace, and
the spiritual ties arising therefrom, ought to find expression in an outer
life of fellowship, of intercourse and common action, and such
common organisation as for human beings in this world these require.
No doubt it is always too possible that the outward may hinder the
perception of the inward. But if we can guard successfully against this
danger, the inward and spiritual will become all the more potent by
having the external form through which to work; while the outward, if
it is too sharply dissevered in thought from the inward, loses its value
and even becomes injurious.
Again, a view of the Church is more wholesome which does not
encourage us to classify its members in a manner only possible to the
Allseeing God; to draw a line between true believers and others, and to
determine (it may be) on which side of the line different ones are by
their having had spiritual experiences similar to our own, and having
learned to use the same religious language that we do; but which on the
contrary leads us to think of all as under the Heavenly Father's care,
and subject to the influences of the Holy Spirit, and placed in that Body
of Christ where, although the spiritual life in them is as yet of very
various degrees of strength, and their knowledge of things Divine in
many cases small, all may and are intended to advance to maturity in
Christ.

It is necessary that the relation of the idea of the Church upon which I
have been dwelling to her subsequent history for centuries should be
clearly apprehended. Its hold on the minds of Christians preceded the
very beginnings of organisation in the Christian communities, and it
would probably be no exaggeration to say that it governed the whole
evolution of that organisation for many centuries. Particular offices
were doubtless instituted and men appointed to them with specific
reference to needs which were making themselves felt. But all the
while that idea of the Church's unity and of her holiness was present in
their thoughts. And certainly as soon as it becomes necessary to insist
upon the duty of loyalty to those who had been duly appointed to office,
and directly or indirectly to defend the institutions themselves, appeal
is made to the idea, as notably by the two chief Christians in the
Sub-Apostolic Age, Clement of Rome and Ignatius.
It is in itself evidence of a common spirit and common tendencies that
broadly speaking the same form of constitution in the local Christian
communities, though not introduced everywhere with quite equal
rapidity, was so nearly everywhere almost on the confines of the
Apostolic Age, and that soon it was everywhere. Ere long, with this
form of government as a basis, plans were adopted expressly for the
purpose of uniting the local Churches on terms of equality among
themselves, especially in combating error. And at length in the name
still of the Church's unity there came, however much we may regret it,
the centralisation of Western Christendom in the See of Rome.
All these measures of organisation, from the earliest to the latest of
them, were means to an end; and we shall regard them differently.