In determining, then, what the church should be, it will be necessary to ascertain the characteristics of the apostolic church. If the church of the present day be essentially different from the apostolic as a matter of preference, it can not be the church of which God is the author. Hence it can not be a divine institution, neither can it be the virgin bride of Christ. It follows, therefore, that the church must possess the following characteristics:
1. It Must Be a Divine Institution
At the beginning the church was a divine institution, and it can not cease to be divine and still be the church of God, for God does not begin with the divine and end with the human. Beginning in the spirit the things of God are not made perfect in the flesh. A divine institution must have for its organization and essential features divine authority, for the world can not make an ordinance or an institution divine. It must be specially appointed of God. No human institution, therefore, nor combination of institutions for which there is no special divine appointment, can ever constitute the church of God, for it is of God and not of men. Hence the church must be in all its essential features of specific divine appointment. These appointments are all found in the New Testament; therefore, the church to be a divine institution must be fashioned after that model.
2. It Must Be Governed Wholly by Divine Authority.
The church was governed wholly by divine authority at the beginning. Should it substitute human for divine authority it would cease to be the church of God. A substitute for a divine thing can never itself be divine; therefore, anything substituted for the church as it was in the beginning is not that church. Just as certainly therefore, as Christ will own and accept his church when he comes again, so certainly will it be governed by his authority. Christ will accept only the church which he established. That which he established was governed wholly by divine authority: therefore the church of today must be so governed.
3. It Should Have Only the Names It Had at the Beginning.
In the New Testament there are various names applied to the church and to its members. All these names have their significance, for the Holy Spirit never used them by accident, and for these names, and for these only, is there divine authority. The true church of to-day will be governed by divine authority; therefore, only these will the church accept. This with it is not simply a matter of taste, but of loyalty to Christ. Names unknown to the New Testament have come of the apostasy.
4. It Must Have the Form of Government Given to the Church in the Beginning.
It must necessarily be true, since it recognizes only the same authority. The church of to-day could not disregard the government of the New Testament church and still be the same church. Its congregations are not bound in the coils of an ecclesiasticism as merciless as it is unscriptural. Its bishops are not diocesan, but congregational. There are not a plurality of churches, under one bishop, but a plurality of bishops in one church. Its government is not in the hands of a legislative body, but it is under the legislation of Christ, executed by the several congregations.
5. It Has the Unity of the Church of the New Testament.
This conclusion is reached from several considerations. (1) Since the church is governed only by divine authority, has the same form of government that it had in the beginning, and wears only the names found in the New Testament, the unity that characterized the first church follows as a consequence. (2) The destruction of the unity of the church was the work of the apostasy; hence when the church is reclaimed from the apostasy it will be freed from this disunion. (3) There can be no doubt that Christ’s prayer for the unity of his people can now be fulfilled as it was at the beginning. This unity can never exist through denominational walls. There were no denominational walls between the Father and the Son, neither was there any between the first disciples. Hence, if that prayer is answered in the restoration of the church, and it must be, there must be the same unity that characterized the church in the beginning.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH AND THE TEMPLE
Under the Patriarchal and Jewish dispensation there were numerous animal sacrifices by divine appointment. Not only so, but the people generally, who knew not the true God, have, all down the ages, poured sacrificial blood upon altars innumerable. This must have come about by the perversion of divinely-appointed sacrificial institutions, or from the felt need of fallen man for some way of mediation and of approach to God. That the need was felt by true worshipers is not open to doubt, for if sacrifice were devised by man, it would only have arisen from a sense of that need; and, on the other hand, if ordained of God, it could only have been acceptably offered under a consciousness thereof.
Sacrifices, altars and priests have generally stood together; and so long as they have been upon divine lines have been highly beneficial. But it has been alleged that priests have been a curse rather than a blessing to the nations, and I am not prepared to dispute the allegation. But neither God nor the Bible is responsible, because the priesthood as instituted by the Jews was a good and not an evil to that people; while, on the other hand, the priestly system has no place in Christianity. The priests of heathendom and of Christendom are not of God. Then how widely different, how completely opposite, is the unpriestly worship of the Church of Christ from the sacerdotal ceremonies of the Jewish economy. There we find the costly temple, in the construction of which were gold, silver, precious stones and costly fabrics in unrestricted abundance; sacred places over which the people may not pass, and which the feet of priests and Levites only may tread; ceremonials which bring death to those who touch them with other than priestly hands; altars and fires, blood and incense, and priests, all of divine ordering, so that we read:
Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before Jehovah. And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. And the priests stood, according to their offices; the Levites also with instruments of music of Jehovah, which David the King had made to give thanks unto Jehovah (for his loving kindness endureth forever), when David raised by their ministry; and the priests sounded trumpets before them; and all Israel stood. Moreover Solomon hallowed the middle of the court that was before the house of Jehovah; for there he offered and burnt offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the brazen altar which Solomon had made was not able to receive the burnt offering, and the meat offering, and the fat.
So Solomon held the feast at that time seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great assembly, from the entrance of Hamath unto the brook of Egypt. And on the eighth day they held a solemn assembly: for they kept the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast seven days. And on the three and twentieth day of the seventh month, he sent the people away unto their tents, joyful and glad of heart for the goodness that Jehovah had showed unto David, and to Solomon, and to Israel his people. (II Chron. 7:4-10.)
The significance, and richness, and glory of that economy surpassed anything that the world had ever seen; but in the fullness of time it was superseded by a higher and more glorious dispensation, concerning which the Apostle Paul wrote:
And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written, and engraven on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face which glory was passing away: how shall not rather the ministration of the spirit be with glory? For if the ministration of condemnation hath glory, much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth. For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory. (II Cor. 3:4-11.)
Shall we, then, look for still greater material splendor and wealth in temples, vestments, altars and instruments of music? If not, why not? And still, if not, why did the like exist under the former and inferior economy? We should look for nothing of the sort, nor suffer its intrusion upon the Church of Christ, and that for one reason, sufficient without others equally good—the former economy, in all its ceremonials, was typical of spiritual blessings then to come. There was a perfect typical system most expressive and opposite, but rendered useless when its antitypes appeared. The cross took the place of the altar; the High Priest of our confession came in the room of the Aaronic priesthood, “the sacrifice of praise,” “that is the fruit of our lips,” set aside the praise by trumpets, psaltery and cymbal. These were good and expressive in their day and place. “A shadow of things to come; but the body is Christ” (Col. 2:17). “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh. Else would they not have ceased to be offered?” (Heb. 10:1). So we see that the Holy Spirit very aptly informs us that “the body” or substance, is Christ’s, and when he came and filled to the full the types and shadows of the law, they passed away in their entirety, giving place to higher institutions, by means of which the worshipers could be made perfect. “And not only so,” as a ripe Bible student very forcefully says, “but just in proportion as these abandoned shadows are intruded into the church and worship of God they become injurious and more or less substitutes for the realities of which, in their day and place, they were the proper types and symbols. Consequently, in setting in order, by the apostles, of the Church of Christ, the temple and its worship were in no degree taken as models, and this is highly reasonable, inasmuch as the existence together of the type and the antitype would be completely inadmissible. Nothing could have been easier than for the apostles to have adopted priestly, or modified priestly vestments. There could have been no manner of difficulty in burning incense as an act of praise of worship. It can not be supposed but that, long before the close of the apostolic ministry, they could have used and enjoined the use of instrumental music. But no! Nothing of the kind; no trace even of a leaning, or of a desire, in that direction. The things of the shadows were done with, and those of the substance took their place.”
That the church is not modeled after the temple, but after the synagogue, is established beyond doubt by the testimony of the learned men in the denominational world. If objection be made to the inconsistency of denominational scholars putting forth such views, I answer that it is a well-known fact that men do confess truths that they fail to carry into effect; but the truth is not weakened thereby, but rather derives additional weight from the fact that it forces confession, even against the interests and associations of those who utter it. But however that may be, they write the truth abundantly clear.