Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

These five texts from the apostle Paul seem to us very plain and conclusive as to his opinions. But perhaps the strongest evidence in proof of a universal restoration is to be found in Christ's own parable of the prodigal son. For in this the genuine spirit and purpose of the gospel is shown to be that God never loses his fatherly love for his rebellious and lost children. On the contrary, his heart yearns towards them with a more earnest affection than towards the holy and [pg 390] good. The prodigal son represents those who are “dead in sin.” (Luke 15:24-32.) The parable teaches that God loves them all the while they are away, and that “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.” Now, if God loves the sinners thus whose bodies are yet alive, does he cease to love them when the bodily change takes place which we call death? Does his nature change then? And if not, does it ever change? After millions of years, if they have been lost and dead so long, has his love become weary of waiting, or does “his mercy endure forever”?

To us it seems clear, that if the parable of the prodigal son is to be taken as a true statement of the feeling of God towards every sinner, that every sinner must at last be brought back by the mighty power of this redeeming love. The power of the human will to resist God is indeed indefinite; but the power of love is infinite. Sooner or later, then, in the economy of the ages, all sinners must come back, in penitence and shame, to their Father's house, saying, “Make us as thy hired servants.” If so, if universal restoration does not mean primarily restoration to outward happiness, but to inward obedience, it seems to us that the doctrine may be so stated as to be a new motive for present repentance and obedience. May we not say to the sinner, You may resist God to-day, to-morrow, for a million years; but, sooner or later, you must return, obey, repent, and submit? God will spare no means to bring you. His love to you requires him to use all methods, all terrors, all suffering. The “worm that never dies,” the “fire that is never quenched,” the “outer darkness,”—these are all blessed means, in the providence of the Almighty, to bring the sinner back to a sense of his evil state. In the other world, as in this world, God will “chasten us, not for his pleasure, but for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.”

Chapter XV. The Christian Church.

§ 1. The Question stated.

One of the most interesting questions of the present time, in practical theology, concerns the nature, authority, organization, functions, and future of the Christian Church. The interest in this subject has recently much revived, in consequence of a reaction towards the Roman Catholic or High Church view. This has appeared in the tendency among Protestants to join the Catholic Church as the only true and saving Church of Christ. The same tendency has taken into the Church of England, and into the Episcopal Church of the United States, those who were not ready to go as far as Rome. It is therefore important and useful to ask, What is the truth and what the error in the different views concerning the Church? These differ very widely. The Roman Catholics declare that theirs is the only true Church, and that out of it is no salvation. Many Protestants reply that the Roman Catholic Church is Antichrist, and the only true Churches are those which hold the Evangelical or Orthodox creed. The Swedenborgians say that the Old Church came to an end in 1758, and that since then the New Church has taken its place. Finally, a considerable number of persons maintain that all these churches are worse than useless, and that it is the duty of Christians to come out, and be separate from them all. They do not believe in the need of any church, but would substitute for it societies for special purposes,—lyceums and literary clubs for purposes of mental instruction; temperance societies, peace societies, and other associations for moral [pg 392] purposes; and Odd-Fellows associations, Masonic associations, and clubs for social purposes.

The question then is, Is a Christian Church needed for the permanent wants of man? Was such a Church established by Christ? If so, which Church is it? And what is to be its future character and mode of organization?

It is scarcely necessary to discuss here the abstract question—Is a church an essential want of man, so as to be needed by him forever? It is enough to show that a church is needed now, and will be, for a long time to come. Every religion has had its church. No sooner does a new idea arise, than it is incorporated in some outward union. The new wine is put into new bottles. Confucius has his church, Mohammed has his church; even Mormonism and Spiritualism have established their churches. The Christian Church arose immediately after the ascension of Jesus; it came as a matter of necessity, born not of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. It has continued ever since, in ever-varying forms, but one undying body. Other institutions have risen and passed away. The Roman empire has disappeared. The barbarous nations overflowed Europe, and then were civilized, Christianized, and absorbed into the Christian Church. Protestantism separated from Romanism, but the Church remained in both. Other sects, Presbyterian, Independent, Quaker, Methodist, Baptist, Swedenborgian, Unitarian, Universalist, separated from the main Protestant body, but each took with it the church; each has its own church. Even the Quakers, the most unchurched apparently of any, who renounced the visible ministry, and the visible sacraments, made themselves presently into the most compact church of all. So the word continues evermore to be made flesh. So all spirit presently becomes incarnate in body. The body is outward and visible; the spirit inward and invisible. Both are necessary to the life, growth, and active influence of the gospel. Without the spirit of Christianity, the body would [pg 393] be good for nothing; it would be only a corpse. Without the body of Christianity, the spirit would be comparatively inactive; it would be only a ghost. A body without spirit corrupts and is offensive; a spirit without body is inoperative and alarming. Through body alone the spirit can act; through spirit alone the body can live.

Without asking, therefore, for any other authority for the Church, than its adaptation to human wants, we may safely say, that it is a great mistake to suppose we can dispense with churches. You cannot overthrow the churches, not the weakest of them, by any agency you can use; for all came up to meet and supply a want of the human soul. They are built on that rock. What will you put in their place? A lyceum? A debating society? A reform club? What are you to say to the souls of men, hungering and thirsting for God? What to the sinner, borne down by the mighty weight of transgression? What to the dying man, who knows not how to prepare to meet his God? We need the Church of Christ—the Church whose great aim it is, and always has been, to renew and regenerate the soul from its foundation, to lay the axe at the root of the tree of evil, and the very sound of whose bell, rolling its waves of music over the sleeping hills on the Sabbath morning, is worth more to the soul than a thousand lyceums and debating societies.