Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

Therefore the Ideal Church is an earthly heaven. There is in it a warm, serene, sunny atmosphere; a sky without clouds; the society of love, the solitude of meditation, the inaccessible mountain tops of prayer; the low-lying, quiet valleys, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

But where is the Ideal Church? We have seen that it is not in the past, where many look for it. The golden age of the Church, the Paradisiacal state of Christianity, is not behind us. Was the Ideal Church that which persecuted Paul for renouncing Judaism? Was it any of the Churches described by John in the book of Revelation? that of Ephesus, which had “left its first love”? that of Pergamos, which contained heretical teachers? that of Thyatira, which communed with Jezebel and the depths of Satan? that of Sardis, which had “a name to live, and was dead”? or that of Laodicea, which was lukewarm?

Was that an Ideal Church where Paul was obliged to write to Titus that a bishop must not be a striker, nor given to wine, nor to filthy lucre? and to advise Timothy to avoid “profane and vain babbling”?

There was more life in it than in the Church now; a great struggling, but undeveloped power of life, heaving and tossing the Church, as with subterranean fire—smoke and flame bursting forth together; a great power of life, but little chance of doctrine as yet; little harmony of action; little in accordance with our ideas of decency and order. It was the spring time, and as in the spring there is a great power of life in nature, swelling all buds, pushing all shoots, unfolding leaves,—but all things still bare; few flowers, no fruit,—so it was in the Primitive Church. It was not Ideal. The Ideal Church is before us, not behind us; it is to come.

§ 10. The Church Possible, or Church as it can be.

Is any Church possible but the Actual? We think there is. We think that a Church may be something more and better than any we have now. Without reaching the ideal standard we can yet do something.

We think it possible for a Church to be united on a basis of study and action rather than on that of attainment. Instead of having it consist of those who have formed opinions, let it consist of those who wish to form them. Instead of having it consist of those who have been converted, and who believe themselves pious, let it consist of those who wish to be converted, and who desire to be pious. Instead of having it consist of good people, let us invite in the bad people who desire to be good. Do you send your children to school because they are learned, and not rather because they are ignorant? Why should we not become disciples of Christ because of our ignorance, rather than our knowledge.

We think it possible to have a Church, and even a denomination, organized, not on a creed, but on a purpose of working together. Suppose that the condition of membership was the desire and intention of getting good and doing good. The members of a church are not those who unite in order to partake the Lord's Supper, but to do the Lord's work. The Lord's Supper is their refreshment after working. They come together sometimes to remember his love, and to get strength from him. Let them sit together, express their desires, confess their faults, say what they have been trying to do, where they have failed, where succeeded, and so encourage each other to run with diligence the race set before them.

We therefore think it possible for a Church to be built on Christ himself, and not on a minister. The Church might even do without a sermon; the members might pray together and sing together, when they had no minister, and be a true family of Christian men and women, brothers and sisters in the Lord. The lowest view of a Christian Church is that [pg 420] which makes it a body of pew-holders; the next lowest, that which makes them an audience met to hear a sermon; the next lowest, a mere congregation or assembly of worshippers; a little higher is that of a body of communicants, bound together by the desire of knowing Christ; but highest of all is that which regards a Church as the body of Christ. Such a Church is to learn of him, and to do his will; it is his eyes, to look on all things with a Christian vision; his hands, by which he shall still touch and heal the wretched; his feet, to go through the world, to search out its evils and sins; his mouth, through which he shall speak words of divinest help and encouragement. “The body of Christ, and members one of another.” The body of Christ; always active, always progressing, always advancing; advancing into a deeper and better knowledge of his will, into a purer love of his kingdom, into a further and divine life of union with him; the body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, making increase of the body to the building of itself up in love.