According, therefore, to Agatho and Dr. Newman, the tongue “which is set on fire of hell,” does not separate us from God, but an error of opinion does. Pride, “which [pg 399] comes before a fall,” and sensuality, which makes of a man a beast, do not come between the soul and God so much as an honest error of opinion.
The Protestant Church fails to overcome the Catholic Church only by being too much like the latter. With Protestant ideas, we have semi-Catholic Churches. We claim as our fundamental principle the right of private judgment, and then denounce and exclude those who differ from us. We claim that the soul is not to be saved by monkish seclusion, by going away from the world; and yet we do not preach and carry out in our church-action the purpose of saving the bodies of men as well as their souls. When the Protestant Church work gets more into harmony with Protestant ideas, we shall then see fewer relapses into Romanism.
§ 4. Christ's Idea of a Church, or the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Roman Catholics having made the visible Church, or outward Christian community, the central idea of Christianity, and having changed this into a close corporation of priests, it was natural, perhaps, that Protestants should go too far in another direction. Accordingly, the central idea in Protestantism is not the Church, but the salvation of the soul; not social, but personal religion; not the Christian community, but personal development; not the kingdom of heaven here, but heaven in a future life. Yet it is true, and has been shown lately with great power,[68] that the direct and immediate object of Jesus was to establish a community of believers. This was implied in his being the Christ,—for the Christ was to be the head of the kingdom of heaven,—and the kingdom of heaven was to be an earthly and human institution. Jesus took the idea of the kingdom of God, as it was announced by the prophets; purified, developed, deepened, and widened it; and it resulted in his varied descriptions of the “kingdom of heaven,” This phrase, in the mouth of Jesus, expresses essentially what we mean by “the Church.” [pg 400] This will appear more plainly if we sum up the principal meanings of the phrase “kingdom of God” in the New Testament. It is,—
1. Something near at hand.
Mark 1:15. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” Luke 9:27. “There are some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God.” Mark 9:1. “There be some of them which stand here which shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”
2. It was already beginning.
Luke 17:20. “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, Lo, there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within (or ‘among’) you.”
3. It was not of this world.