The Revival of Religion in the Eighteenth Century

John S. Simon

The student of the development of the Christian religion is aware that, in the teaching of Christ and His Apostles, we see the triumph of the spiritual over the ecclesiastical and ceremonial view of religion. The triumph cannot be understood without some knowledge of the struggle, and the record of the struggle is to be found in the Old Testament. In that book we see the elaborating of a system of ceremonial worship, which finally, became a burden that crushed the spiritual instincts of the Jewish people. In watching the tragedy, it is a relief to find that the tyranny of mere religiousness was assailed by men who knew that the direct service of God in their spirit was something altogether different from service through an intermediary priest at an altar or in a Temple. It is not necessary to dwell at any length on such familiar illustrations of the fact as Samuel’s words to Saul, ‘Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams’ (1 Sam. xv. 22) or the statement in the Book of Proverbs, ‘To do justice and judgement is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice’ (Prov. xxi. 3) or the assurance of the Psalmist, ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise’ (Ps. ii 17). There are two passages, however, in Jeremiah which bring a ceremonial and a spiritual religion into sharp contrast, and which throw a stream of light upon the great controversy, which was closed by Christ’s emphatic words to the woman of Samaria. Let us pause for a few moments to consider Jeremiah’s significant statements.

Jeremiah, speaking in the name of God, says: ‘I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you’ (vii. 22, 23). In this passage we think it is clear that Jeremiah teaches the great truth that, in the original intention of God, the religious life of man was to be ethical and spiritual, and that the system of sacrifices was to be subordinate to the regnant idea. Sacrifices only served their purpose when they assisted to educate men into a life of obedience. The supreme object of ceremony and teaching was to create in worshippers and disciples a heart that loved God, a heart that absolutely submitted to His will. Unfortunately, they failed to accomplish their purpose. Jeremiah, in the chapter from which we have quoted, depicts the failure of the ceremonial system. He was directed to stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and to confront the crowds that flocked to the Temple. He stops the way of those who were streaming towards the altars with words that must have startled them. He cried: ‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in. this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, and the temple of the Lord are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgement between a man and his neighbour; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt: then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land I gave to your fathers, from of old even for evermore’ (vv. 3 - 7). There you have the ethical note; not a word of sacrifices, or of the benefits arising from the performance of a correct ceremonialism. The subject of sacrifices comes into view, but it kindles the prophet’s indignation. He has watched the men burning incense to Baal; he has seen the children gathering wood, the fathers kindling the fire, the women kneading the dough, the making of the cakes to the queen of heaven, the pouring out of drink-offerings to other gods. And now these idolaters come into the Temple, thinking that the Holy One of Israel may as well be remembered, and that no harm will be done if they also give something to Him. ‘No,’ cries the prophet, ‘He can do without your sacrifices. The time is coming when he will sweep the Temple and all its altars away. They are merely instruments with which he has sought to teach you the obedience you have failed to learn. They have become a hindrance to you. As the house in Shiloh has been destroyed, so will He do to this house that is called by His name. Everything shall vanish that blinds your eyes to the fact that obedience is the gift and sacrifice with which God is well pleased.’

In the estimation of Jeremiah, obedience to the will of God occupies the supreme place in the religious life. We may well ask him how this habit of obedience is to be formed. We get his answer. In the thirty-first chapter of his prophecy there is a declaration of the profoundest meaning. He says: ‘Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more’ (vv. 31 - 34).

Dean Plumptre, in commenting on the words ‘they shall teach no more every man his neighbour,’ says - “We trace in that hope for the future the profound sense of failure which oppressed the mind of the prophet, as it has oppressed the minds of many true teachers since. What good had come of all the machinery of ritual and of teaching which the law of Israel had provided so abundantly? Those repeated exhortations on the part of preachers and prophets that men should ‘know the Lord,’ what did they present but the dreary monotony as of an ‘old worm-eaten homily’? To know Him as indeed He is, required nothing less than a special revelation of His presence to each man’s heart and spirit; and that revelation was now, for his comfort, promised for all who were willing to receive it as the special gift of the near or distant future which opened to his view in his vision of the restored Israel.”

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, that epistle in which the kingdom, which cannot be shaken, comes into view, we see that the ‘New Covenant’ takes its place among permanent facts. There, as in Jeremiah’s prophecy, we find ‘the machinery of ritual and of the teaching of the law,’ having fulfilled their purpose, wax old and vanish. The verdict of the later writers of the Old Testament is endorsed by the Evangelists and Apostles - the ‘machinery’ had failed to make men know God, had failed to make them obey Him. In the day of Christ a new method is to be employed. Reliance is to be no longer placed on ceremony and homily. The experience of the forgiveness of sins is to lead to the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of God is to lead to perfect obedience to the divine will.

The knowledge of the forgiveness of sins is the resonant note of the Church of the New Covenant, and that note was sounded by the men who heralded and conducted the Evangelical Revival. Mr. Gladstone, in the remarkable article he contributed to the British Quarterly Review of July 1879, emphasizes this fact. He describes the ‘Evangelical Movement’ of the eighteenth century as ‘a strong, systematic, outspoken, and determined reaction against the prevailing standards both of life and preaching.’ He says - “It aimed at bringing back, on a large scale, and by an aggressive movement, the Cross, and all that the Cross essentially implies, both into the teaching of the clergy and into the lives as well of the clergy as the laity.”

Mr. Gladstone was right. ‘The bringing back of the Cross!’ That is the secret of the success of the Church of the New Covenant. The secret lay hidden, through dismal ages, in the teaching of Jeremiah, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in the letters and work of St. Paul; it was discovered at last by the men who stirred the conscience of England in the eighteenth century, when myriads of sorrowing people were led into the joyous experience of the forgiveness of sins.

When we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, and consider the descriptions contained therein of the Jewish and Gentile Pentecost’s, we wonder that the Church should have so completely forgotten that the ‘forgiveness of sins’ preludes the deep experiences of the Christian life. The Gentile Pentecost occurred in Caesarea, in the house of Cornelius. St. Peter was the missionary. When he returned to Jerusalem he gave an account to them ‘of the circumcision’ of the incidents connected with his preaching to the Gentiles. Describing the effects of his preaching, he said, ‘As I began to speak the Holy Ghost fell on them, even as on us at the beginning.’ What was he speaking about when the power of the Spirit of God descended on his audience? We have the words he was uttering: ‘To Him bear all the prophets witness, that through His name, whosoever believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins’ (Acts x. 43). Some of those who listened to St. Peter’s ‘apology’ must have been moved as the voice of memory spoke of a similar experience, especially when he went on to say, ‘If then God gave unto them the like gift as he did also unto us, when we believed on the Lord Jesus, who was I, that I could withstand God?’ (Acts xi. 15 - 18). Criticism was hushed by the recollection of the supreme hour when they also received their baptism of fire.

The revisers of the New Testament have laid us under a great obligation by the change they have introduced into a sentence spoken by St. Peter to the Caesarean critics. The A.V. says: ‘Forasmuch, then, as God gave them the like gift as He did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus,’ but the R.V. tells us that the gift came ‘when’ they believed on the Lord Jesus. The change leads us to mark the time and the reason of the descent of the Spirit. The gift came in consequence of their believing ‘on’ the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, it came when those who were gathered together in the upper room believed on Christ for the remission of their sins.

‘The remission of sins’: that is the trumpet-note that sounds clearly through the morning air of every great revival. There is no true revival in which that note is not predominant. When the ‘joyful news of sins forgiven’ is published and believed, then follows the renewal of the heart by the might of the Spirit of God. Upon the new heart the new law is written, the law, which gathers up all commandments into one: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.’

It has been abundantly demonstrated that the way into the new life lies through the keen and full apprehension of the fact of the forgiveness of our sins. We shall be met at this point by some who will ask us to account for the ineffectiveness of Churches, which give prominence in their formularies to the doctrine of forgiveness. Every church that uses the Apostles’ Creed has proclaimed through the centuries, not only by the lips of its priests, but also of its people, that it believes in the forgiveness of sins. Why then has not the Church always been in a state of revival?

The answer to the question we have suggested is not difficult to give. The words ‘I believe’ may be used in a great variety of meanings; may be uttered with an extraordinary difference of emphasis. In the Apostolic age belief was a mighty force of mind, heart, and spirit that led a man into immediate contact with God, and that contact filled him with a divine life. But the subsequent history of the Church has shown that men have emptied the word ‘believe’ of its force. It has come to pass that men say that they believe who scarcely exercise their mind when pronouncing their creed. A man may say, ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty,’ and may be a practical atheist. If we were to accuse him of atheism, he would be indignant. He does, in a kind of a way, believe in God, but he is so insulated by worldliness that he is cut off from the divine Presence. He may, spell-like, use the shibboleths of his creed, but their use never brings to him a single gleam of the light and glory of the Eternal God.

The ineffectiveness of the act of believing is not the only reason why Churches, which possess correct formularies concerning the forgiveness of sins, fail to reform the world. It is a melancholy fact that the Church has obscured, by its teaching, the doctrine of pardon; a doctrine which, in the life of Christ, is set before us with beautiful simplicity. In the words and actions of our Lord we have a revelation of the movements of the divine Mind, the love of the divine Heart. It is intensely interesting to watch Christ as He deals with sorrowful sinners. How swift is the relief He gives them! We do not now speak of the cleansing of the leper, or the raising of the dead; we speak of the gracious celerity with which he lifted the burden of sin from the conscience of a weeping woman or a palsied man. ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee!’ What a wealth of love and beauty and power lies in each word of that sentence! When it is spoken we can see the eager and astonished look, and then the answering joy in the eyes of those who listen to the words, ‘Go in peace.’ Such a revelation of the methods of the divine forgiveness ought not to have been misread. Why have we had such wearisome discussions on the possibility of the assurance of the pardon of sin? Why have we wasted so much time in doubting the reality of ‘instantaneous conversions’? Our discussions have run along lines fatally afflicted with modernity; they have not led us up to the methods of Christ. With thankfulness we say that a change is impending. One of the healthiest signs of the times is the tendency to make direct appeals to Jesus Christ on all questions that concern the salvation of men. The successors of the evangelists who brought back the Cross and planted it in the churches of England welcome that appeal. We do not fear Christ’s decision on the question of the forgiveness of sins. Let us consult Him. He must speak the last word in the controversy that has dragged its slow length along the dark centuries. We shall have to hear that word soon. Why should we not hear it now?

When we turn from the Master to His Apostles we pass from noonday to twilight. But the dimmer light comes from the sun; and in it we see facts concerning the great doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, which harmonize with those, which are revealed in the life of our Lord. We have dwelt upon the teaching of the Apostles concerning the gift of the Spirit. We have seen that in apostolic days, when a man believed on the name of Christ for the remission of sins, he received the Holy Ghost. Belief was an individual act, the contact of a man’s own soul with his Saviour, and, as a result of belief, there was a direct communication of the Spirit’s influences to him without the intervention or permission of an apostle. When the apostle had preached, his work was done. He had spoken words whereby the man might be saved. Then he stood aside, and the believer, exercising faith in the crucified Christ, realized the great experience of forgiveness.

If the simplicity of the doctrine of forgiveness, as it appears in the life of Christ and His Apostles, had been preserved, then the constant experience of pardon would have energized the Church throughout the ages. But it is a melancholy fact that the stream of pure teaching concerning the forgiveness of sins was disturbed soon after it flowed from its source; and it is to be regretted that the disturbance arose from the misuse of words, which the Master Himself had spoken.

Those words are to be found in Matt. xvi. 19, Matt. xviii. 18, and John xx. 23. In Matt. xvi. 19, Christ, in addressing St. Peter after his famous declaration of faith, says: ‘I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ in Matt. xviii. 18, in speaking to His disciples, Christ uses practically the same words He addressed to St. Peter: ‘Verily I say unto you, What things so-ever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and what things so-ever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ In John XX. 23, after His resurrection, speaking again to his disciples, he says: ‘whose so-ever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose so-ever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ We have now before us the three passages, which have been employed by certain sections of the Church to mar the simplicity and effectiveness of the great doctrine of pardon.

The words of the Lord Jesus to St. Peter have been used to build up the astounding claims of the Church of Rome to a supremacy over all other sections of the Christian Church. On this point it is enough to say that whatever may be the meaning of the ‘keys’ and ‘binding’ and ‘loosing,’ it is certain that the power ‘to bind and loose’ belongs to the other disciples as much as to St. Peter. We may, therefore, concentrate our attention on the second passage from St. Matthew. If we look at it in its connexion we see what Christ means. He is dealing with a sin, which has been committed against a man by a ‘brother’ - that is, a fellow Christian. In such a case these directions are given: ‘Go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hears thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican. Verily I say unto you, what things so-ever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and what things so-ever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father, which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Vers. 15 - 20).

Only a person prejudiced in favour of some theory of the necessity of priestly absolution can have sufficient ingenuity to pervert the simple meaning of these words. They evidently refer to the misunderstandings and quarrels, which arise among Christian people. Immediately after the twentieth verse comes the question of St. Peter: ‘Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’ Let us remember Christ’s answer, and the parable of the two servants that follows. How does that parable end? ‘His lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due. So shall also My heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts’ (vers. 34, 35). The directions, which have been so misapplied, concern the manner in which we are to treat offences against ourselves. ‘Every one’ has not only the right, but is bound to exercise the right, of forgiving his brother. This right is possessed not only by the individual, but by the church, or the ‘congregation,’ as the word stands in the margin of the R.V. Not only so. The right is also possessed by two or three persons who have gathered together in Christ’s name. It is impossible to discern in these plain words concerning the settlement of private disputes any warrant for the doctrine that a ‘priest’ possesses the exclusive authority to absolve people from sins committed not only against each other, but also against God.

When we turn to the incident recorded in St. John’s Gospel, we find ourselves unable to detect the presence of the absolving priest. Look at the circumstances. The company to which the risen Saviour revealed Himself was an assembly of His disciples. It was not made up exclusively of apostles. Indeed, Thomas was absent, and did not receive, as an apostle, the power to forgive sins, if that power was conferred by the words of Christ on this occasion. To the assembled disciples, having breathed on them, the Saviour said: ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose so-ever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose so-ever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ It is clear that these words run along the lines of the declaration in St. Matthew. Whatever may be their meaning; they were not spoken to a small section of the Church, but to the Church in full assembly.

We have seen that the great change which comes to a man, and which we call his salvation, is preceded by the act of divine pardon. That act is accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit conveys the intelligence of forgiveness to the penitent soul, and, as a consequence, the love of God is shed abroad in the heart. The love of God being shed abroad creates the new life in the soul; and, from that moment, the man who has believed in Christ and has been filled with the love of God enters upon the experience of salvation. The supreme worker in this great change is God, and He acts directly upon the individual by the sole agency of His Holy Spirit. Looking through the records of the apostolic age, the teaching and the facts reported are all consistent with this simple but profound theory of the process of salvation.

It would have been well if the Church had never confused the teaching on the subjects of conversion and salvation. But, unfortunately, such confusion has occurred, and it persists. We have seen that the doctrine of forgiveness has been misstated and perverted. The same melancholy fate has befallen the doctrines, which concern the beginning, the maintenance, and the perfecting of the life of God in the soul of man.

No one who has read the history of the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic age will fall into the delusion that, in those periods, the Christian Church presented a picture of perfection. The Pauline epistles guard us against that mistake, and the facts recited by such writers as Harnack and von-Dobschütz still further save us from error. But, notwithstanding the spots and wrinkles, which disfigure the Early Church, one thing is certain. Up to the middle of the second century we do not find any teaching concerning the sacraments such as we now hear from the Roman Catholic Church and from the lips of High Anglicans.

Baptism in the Ancient Church was a sign that in the estimation of the person who administered it, its subject was already a believer. It was a rite, which set forth, as in a picture, the death and burial of the old self and the rising of the new self to the divine and Christian life. It was not to regenerate a man that he was baptized; he was baptized because he was regenerated. There can be no doubt that, under the solemn circumstances of the baptismal service, there came upon the believing candidate a special effusion of the Holy Spirit’s influences. But that was because, during the administration of the rite, he exercised a larger faith in Christ, and claimed the blessings symbolized by the sacrament. We do not find, in the first and second centuries, that the Church held that unconscious infants are changed into the reconciled children of God by sprinkling. It was only after the Church set up priests, who yearned to possess the magical powers of pagan rivals, that a doctrine was introduced which has blinded the minds of Christian people to the manner in which God, by the agency of the Spirit, regenerates the heart of a believing man.

The first error compelled a second. The comparatively modern doctrine of ‘Baptismal Regeneration’ is now accompanied by extraordinary teaching concerning the life-giving and life-sustaining power of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It is one of the most distressing facts in Church history that the simple acts of breaking bread and drinking wine in remembrance of the death of Christ should have been so used as to lose their primitive and beautiful significance. Indeed, such has been the fatal perverseness of the ecclesiastical mind that these simple acts have become barriers in the way of a sinner’s approach to Christ. It is with sadness that we think of the black clouds of superstition that have curtained the sacred feast. It is with bitter shame that we remember the persecutions that have assailed and destroyed conscientious Christian people who have affirmed that spiritual view of the Eucharist which was in the mind of its first Administrator, and which was held by those who, in the early days of the Church, trod in His steps.

Let us be just to the Ancient Church. Whatever may have been its intellectual and moral defects, it was not under the dominion of the priest; it was not the teacher of sacerdotal doctrines. It is fortunate for us that in The Teaching of the Twelve, so strangely discovered in the library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople, a record has been preserved concerning the Eucharist which shows that, in its celebration, there was no taint of the doctrine which has done so much to obscure the means whereby God effects the salvation of men. Originally, the Eucharistic service was an act of worship, and, especially, it was a thanksgiving service that followed the evening meal. It was celebrated with simplicity, and with brief prayers and ascriptions of praise to God. If we search The Teaching of the Twelve, the oldest Church manual we possess, we do not find any mention of a sacrificing priest, of the change of the elements, of the imparting of spiritual life by the mere taking of the bread and wine. There can be no doubt that, in those early assemblies, when the Church met with one accord in one place and celebrated its love-feast and its Eucharistic service, there were longing eyes that wistfully looked for the Lord, loving lips that whispered, ‘What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?’ Nor was the ‘real presence’ denied them. Assisted by the symbols and the circumstances of the sacrament, by an individual act of faith the spiritual worshippers found that the Saviour was with them; as surely with them as He was with His faithful disciples on that memorable evening when He showed them His hands and His side. They were glad because they saw the Lord. The vision of the risen Christ, obscured by the dust of the day’s toil and the mist of the world’s confusion, glowed in the temple of their spirit. There they worshipped Him; they feasted on Him in their hearts. Refreshed by the personal communion, which had come to them by the exercise of faith, they rose to face the night and the daybreak; they responded to the challenge of the world with a renewed courage and with an assurance of victory. The Saviour, whom they had seen in the supper-room, went with them into the street, into the home, into their work. In times of persecution He accompanied them into the place ‘where there was a garden’; He stood by them on the ‘hill’ when they were stretched upon a cross.

When we look upon those days, and then think of the dreary wanderings of the Church in intermediate years, we feel an aching of the heart because of the unutterable miseries that men have brought upon themselves and others by deserting the plain pathways in which the early Christians walked with their Lord.

It is not difficult to see how the perversion and corruption of the doctrines concerning forgiveness and the manner in which the new spiritual life is created and sustained have told upon the fortunes of Christianity. They have brought back the priest into the Church; they have produced a mechanical theory of salvation; they have created a condition of religious thought and ceremony such as was denounced by the most spiritual prophets and abolished by the coming of Christ. So long as the human priest stands in the way of the Cross-, so long as the Church believes that salvation can only come through him and his actions, so long is it impossible to secure a great revival of religion.

Dean Stanley, in his Christian Institutions, gives us a glimpse of a better time. speaking of absolution, he says - “As the misinterpretation of the texts on which the theory of Episcopal or Presbyterian absolution rests will die out before a sound understanding of the biblical records, so also the theory and practice itself, though with occasional recrudescence’s, will probably die out with the advance of civilization. The true power of the clergy will not be diminished but strengthened by the loss of this fictitious attribute.... In proportion as England has become, and in proportion as it will yet become, a truly free and truly educated people, able of itself to bind what ought to be bound, and to loose what ought to be loosed, in that proportion will the belief in priestly absolution vanish, just as the belief in wizards and necromancers has vanished before the advance of science.”

We agree with his conclusion - The belief in the magical offices of a sacerdotal caste will vanish before the growth of manly Christian independence and generous Christian sympathy.

The forgiveness of sins is not only the gateway through which we pass into the new life; it is the means whereby we attain to knowledge of the law of the Lord. In Jeremiah’s description of the effect of the New Covenant it is predicted that, in those days, which he saw in vision, the law of the Lord would be written on the heart. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews adopts the same view. He quotes Jeremiah’s words: ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them’ (viii. 10). It is impossible for us to sever this assurance from the words that close and complete the prophecy: ‘For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.’ The light, which most perfectly illumines the Christian conscience, is that which springs up during the wonderful experiences that bring to us knowledge of the pardon of our sins.

Knowledge of the law is not the only result that follows forgiveness. The prophet shows that through pardon comes knowledge of the Lord. ‘They shall not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: For all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.’

Newman has said that ‘self-knowledge is the root of all real religious knowledge.’ That is one side of a great fact; the other is that knowledge of God is the root of all real self-knowledge. Let us take Newman’s line for a moment. When we come to knowledge of ourselves as sinners, we are driven to know the God against whom we have sinned. In Him is the remedy for our desperate plight. Gazing into the face of Jesus Christ we see ‘the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.’ Truth and grace are there. Truth that sets up its rigid standard and casts us down by its condemnations; grace that reveals the undeserved loving-kindness of our Father, and breaks our heart by its gentle reproach. A knowledge of our sinful self drives us to know God, and when we know Him we are sure that He will forgive our sins.

But that is not all. Self-knowledge is acquired by painful and disappointing processes. Still, at every revelation of our weakness, defect, and sin we are urged to a more complete knowledge of God. We have made up our mind that He is our sole remedy against ourselves. We explore the mystery of His power and His love, and find, at every step, something that compels us to be holy, something that shows us how that holiness may be attained through Him.

If it is true that the knowledge of God and of His laws comes to us most effectually as the result of the remission of our sins, then we shall note with anxiety the pathway taken by the Church at the close of the apostolic age.

When the light first falls on the Church we see where the teachers of the Christian religion stood. In the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles we have definite descriptions of the doctrines taught by the first preachers of the gospel. The burden of their teaching was ‘the joyful news of sins forgiven.’ Where that gospel glowed in the heart, its reception was followed by a great transformation, and the believer entered into a new life - a life in which shone two great lights: a knowledge of God, and a knowledge of His law.

If we take up the books that give us the clearest view of the condition of the Church immediately after the apostolic age had closed, we detect a change in method. We insist upon the fact that knowledge of the forgiveness of sins leads directly to the highest morality. But when we read The Teaching of the Twelve, and search its pages, it is difficult to find the gospel preacher in it; at any rate it is difficult to discover that aspect of the gospel, which is turned towards us in the Pentecostal scenes of the Acts of the Apostles. All candidates for baptism have to be instructed in the way of life and the way of death. Studying the teaching concerning the ‘two ways,’ we find in it an admirable code of Christian ethics; but where is there any insistence upon the central fact that a man must be born again before he can see the kingdom of God? It may be said that only those who had experienced the ‘New Birth’ were admitted as catechumens. But on the face of the document this does not appear. What is clear is that in a book, which professes to record the ‘Teaching of the Twelve,’ the doctrine of the New Birth is not placed in the position of supreme prominence. It is so placed in the Gospel of St. John, and in the Acts and in the Epistles. But the Teaching is ‘as moonlight unto sunlight.’ The book reaches the level of the Epistle of St. James, but it does not lead us to the heights from which we discern the cross and the throne of Jesus Christ.

In two books, somewhat recently published, we gain an insight into the condition of the Christian Church in the sub-Apostolic age. The impression that is produced by reading them is that, unless the defects of their authors prevented them from seeing that which we are anxious to see, the supreme work of the Early Church, the preaching of the gospel, soon gave way to the ethical instruction of persons who were attracted to Christ by considerations other than an impassioned desire for the pardon of their sins. Professor Ernst von-Dobschütz, in his Christian Life in the Primitive Church, sets himself to describe the moral education of the Church. It is true that he speaks of Christianity entering into the world and ‘gathering churches round the gospel of God’s forgiving grace’; but he bends his whole strength to depict the condition of the morals of the Church, and to describe the methods by which the system of morals was inculcated. When we turn to Harnack’s Expansion of Christianity a similar scene is presented. We know Harnack’s limitations; but there is no denying his immense learning and his unweariable powers of research. What does he say about the doctrines preached by the Early Church? Summarizing the mission preaching to pagans, the type of which he thinks he finds in 1 Cor. xii. 2 and 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, he says - “Here we have the mission-preaching to pagans in a nutshell. The ‘living and true God ‘is the first and final thing; the second is Jesus, the Son of God, the Judge, who secures us against the wrath to come, and is therefore ‘Jesus the Lord.’ To the living God, who is now made known, we owe faith and devoted service; to God’s Son as Lord, our due is faith and hope. The contents of this brief message - objective and subjective, positive and negative - are inexhaustible. Yet the message itself is thoroughly compact and complete. It is objective and positive as the message of the only God, who is spiritual, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Lord and Father of men, and the great disposer of human history; furthermore, it is the message which tells of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came from heaven, made known the Father, died for sins, rose, sent the Spirit hither, and from His seat at God’s right hand will return for the judgement; finally, it is the message of salvation brought by Jesus the Saviour, that is, freedom from the tyranny of demons, sin, and death, together with the gift of life eternal. Then it is objective and negative, inasmuch as it announces the vanity of all other gods, and forms a protest against idols of gold and silver and wood, as well as against blind fate and atheism. Finally, it is subjective, as it declares the uselessness of all sacrifice, all temples, and all worship of man’s devising, and opposes to these the worship of God in spirit and in truth, assurance of faith, holiness and self-control, love and brotherliness, and, lastly, the solid certainty of the resurrection and of life eternal, implying the futility of a present life which lies exposed to future judgement.”

Although Harnack may be wrong in resting his description of the mission-preaching to heathens upon the passages he quotes from St. Paul, there can be no doubt that, in process of time, the preaching of the Church did assume the aspect he has depicted.

Not only did the evangelical note sound more faintly as the years passed, but also the motive of the ethical teaching seems to have become less predominantly Christian. At the present time we are stirred to right conduct not only by the voice of conscience, which urges us to obey the commands of law, but especially by a passionate desire to imitate our Lord. The ‘imitation of Christ’ is a phrase that is hallowed by sacred association. We owe an infinite debt of gratitude to Thomas à Kempis for reviving the idea. But it is undeniable that through many ages of Church history the possibility of such imitation was undiscerned. We cannot indicate the moment when the Church lost sight of the example of its Lord and began to cultivate morals by obeying a verbal ethical standard; but there can be no doubt that its gaze was diverted, and that, as a consequence, immense moral loss ensued. Harnack, in his Expansion of Christianity, writes words, which should be seriously pondered. He says -

“To ‘imitate’ or ‘be like’ Christ did not occupy the place one would expect among the ethical counsels of the age. Jesus had spoken of imitating God, and bidden men follow Himself, whilst the relationship of pupil and teacher readily suggested the formula of imitation. But whenever He was recognised as Messiah, as the Son of God, as Saviour and as Judge, the ideas of imitation and likeness had to give way, although the Apostles still continued to urge both in their epistles, and to hold up the mind, the labours, and the sufferings of Jesus as an example. In the Early Church the imitation of Christ never became a formal principle of ethics (to use a modern phrase) except for the virtuoso in religion, the ecclesiastic, the teacher, the ascetic, or the martyr; it played quite a subordinate part in the ethical teaching of the Church. The injunctions to be like Christ, in the strict sense of the term, also occurred with comparative rarity. Still, it is interesting to collect and examine the passages relative to this point; they show that whilst a parallel was fully drawn between the life of Christ and. the career and conduct of distinguished Christians, such as the emperors, the Early Church did not go to the length of drawing up general regulations with regard to the imitation of Christ. For one thing, the Christology stood in the way, involving not imitation, but obedience; for another thing, the actual details of imitation seemed too severe. Those who made the attempt were always classed as Christians of a higher order (though even at this early period they were warned against presumption), so that the Catholic theory of ‘evangelic counsels’ has quite a primitive root.”

The student of the history of the Early Church, in trying to discover the points of departure from Apostolic teaching and experience, has no difficulty in detecting the difference between the first and the second methods of teaching ethics. Christ summed up all commandments into the great command, and showed that the love of God was the energizing force, which enabled a man to keep the law. The Apostle Paul, continuing the teaching of his Master, declares that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that, when a man loves Christ and lives to be like Him, when he is consumed with a passion to be as He was in this world, then he walks according to the perfect law of liberty. If the mind that was in Christ is in us, then every Christian virtue is secured, then every Christian work is done. It is pitiful to watch the change that came over the experience of the Church when morals were catechistically taught. We see the creeping of the ice-sheet over the garden of the Lord, the garden of the Lord that was once beautiful with the flowers and fruits of a simple, loving Christian life. Under the ice-sheets that spread over some parts of the arctic regions, our explorers find the fossilized flowers that once opened their beauty in the warmth of the summer sun. Those flowers tell of nourishing soil and quickening air. They are relics of a lost paradise. When we note the frigid moralities of the post-Apostolic Church, and compare them with the graces that sprang up under the influence of the love of God in the church of the Philippians, we can only attribute the difference to the absence of atmosphere, and the veiling of the radiance of the Sun of Righteousness.

In tracing the processes by which ‘godliness’ was hardened into ‘religion,’ we must enter upon another line of thought. In the glimpses we get of the Church in its earliest stages, we find a fact that much impresses us. Harnack shows that the spread of Christianity, at the first, was not so much the result of Apostolic preaching as of the work of those who occupied a subordinate and, in some senses, an unofficial position in the Church. As to the Apostles, only one stands out in the New Testament as a great missionary, and he was not of the original twelve. St. Peter confined his work principally to the Jews within the borders of his own country. St. John went further, and probably was the Bishop of Ephesus. The missionary labours of the other Apostles are only known to us through the uncertain legends of the Church. St. Paul is the great missionary; he is the man of whom we instinctively think when we imagine the activities and the successes of the Christian Church in the remotest times.

We must turn aside from the original Apostles if we are to discover the agents in the missionary work of the Early Church. We must think of other ‘apostles’ - those workers who existed in the Church after 70 A.D. and up to the middle of the second century. These men were not the successors of ‘the twelve,’ they were in the line of the ‘other seventy also,’ who were sent out, two by two, as travelling evangelists and missionaries. They preached the gospel from place to place. They were itinerant preachers, who had no fixed church, but went from town to town, calling men to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Harnack says: ‘They were not permanent, elected officials of an individual church, but, primarily, independent teachers, who ascribed their calling to a divine command or charism.’ The Teaching of the Twelve contains interesting directions concerning these wandering preachers. They were to be received ‘as the Lord,’ but were only permitted to remain a day or two in the Christian congregations, which they visited. This was a measure of protection. It was thought that a true apostle would be so full of zeal to preach the gospel to the unconverted that he would not be able to settle down for a lengthy period in one place. The apostle was maintained by the church during his stay. If he asked for money, that was a sign that he was a false apostle. He received hospitality for two or three days; if he remained longer, he had to work for his living. If he refused, he was declared to be a ‘Christ-trafficker,’ i.e. one who makes merchandises of his Christian profession, or uses the name of Christ for selfish ends.

In close connexion with the apostles stand the prophets. The distinction between an apostle and a prophet, in respect of their sphere of action, seems to be that the apostle was a missionary to the heathen, and must not settle down in any church; the prophet was an instructor and comforter of converts, and, in some cases, he was allowed to settle in a particular congregation. As a rule, however, the prophets seem to have belonged to the whole Church, and they itinerated from place to place. They were specially illuminated men, who possessed a gift of expounding the deeper sense of the Scriptures, and of rousing the consciences and stirring the hearts of their hearers. If their addresses proved spiritually effective, then they possessed the chief sign of the true prophet. So far as we know, this was the only proof demanded of them as a warrant for their title and work. They were maintained by the church to which they ministered. They must be poor. If any sign of avarice were detected in them, that showed they were false prophets.

In addition to the apostles and prophets, the itinerant preachers of the Early Church, there were the teachers. Some think that the teachers of the Didaché were members of the congregation who possessed the gift of instructive speech; others, that these men had a distinct office, and that, in general, their work was to go about among the churches and to minister edification, and support the spiritual life of Christian people in various localities. Upon the whole, it is probable that a teacher in the Early Church was a man who was conscious of his own gift and exercised it in public. He was not an elected officer of the church; the church had to decide whether it would hear him. The genuineness of teachers, as of apostles and prophets, was a matter for the consideration and decision of the churches. The teachers had a claim to be maintained by the church; but it does not appear that they were forbidden to earn money in other ways.

The apostles, prophets, and teachers were the gospel ministers who occupied the highest positions in the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic Church. But, in addition, we find that other church officials are mentioned, such as bishops, presbyters, and deacons. We have seen that the highest orders of Christian preachers were, in the main, itinerant preachers. But we readily admit that a ministry that is exclusively itinerant, some members of which only remain a day or two in a particular locality, can never provide an effective form of government for a large and ever-increasing Church. It was necessary, therefore, that in the individual churches there should be congregational officers, who would not only teach, but also govern, and be principally responsible for the administration of the affairs of the church. The difficulty was solved by the creation of the offices of presbyter, or bishop, and deacon. In the Didaché we find that they were elected or appointed by the people of the church they governed. They derived their authority, not directly from the Holy Spirit, as the apostles and prophets, but through the medium of the church. They were to be worthy of the Lord, meek and unselfish, truthful and of good report, and to be honoured like the prophets and teachers.

Dr. Schaff says that the bishops and deacons of the Didaché are evidently the same with those mentioned in the Acts and the Pauline epistles. He thinks that the bishops were the regular teachers and rulers who had the spiritual care of the flock; the deacons were the helpers who attended to the temporalities of the church, especially having the care of the poor and the sick. He also affirms that the bishops of the Didaché are identical with the presbyters. It was not until a later period, probably sometime in the second century, that bishops, priests, and deacons were distinguished as three separate orders in the Church.

There can be no doubt that the chief credit for the spread of Christianity belongs to the itinerant apostles, prophets, and teachers. But, in addition, we must remember that in those early days the members of the Church played an important part in influencing the pagan populations by which they were surrounded. In proportion to the spirituality, the morality, and the evangelizing zeal of a church, was the effect its members produced on their heathen neighbours. Harnack’s conclusion is probably right. He says -

“It was characteristic of this religion that every one who seriously confessed the faith proved of service to its propaganda. Christians are to let their light shine, that pagans may see their good works and glorify the Father in heaven. If this dominated all their life, and if they lived according to the precepts of their religion, they could not be hidden at all; by their very mode of living they could not fail to preach their faith plainly and audibly. We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries. Justin says so quite explicitly. What won him over was the impression made by the moral life, which he found among Christians in general. We may safely assume, too, that really women did play a leading role in the spread of this religion. But it is impossible to see in any one class of people inside the Church the chief agents of the Christian propaganda.”

In seeking for the causes which have influenced the Church, and which have diverted it from its true work of propagating the gospel, we cannot overlook the need for organizing the Church, which we have mentioned. It is useless to deny the necessity and value of such organization. Without it the results gathered together by enthusiastic workers gradually disappear. The necessity of organization arises out of the constitution of human nature; it is a law written in our members. So long as the social instinct survives and persists, so long will organization be imperative. The problem, which an evangelising Church has to solve, is so to organize itself, as that organization shall be the helper, not the hinderer, of evangelisation. If organization prevents genuine evangelisation, then it must be made to yield. Those who have followed the course of the Church through the ages know that the difficulty that always confronts an evangelising Church arises from the dominance of an organization that is unpliable and imperious. In such cases, organization, instead of being a servant, becomes a tyrant. This danger, arising from an inflexible organization, was soon revealed in the experiences of the Early Church. The apostles and prophets, even the evangelists, disappeared.

“Then [says Schaff] the bishops absorbed all the higher offices and functions, and became in the estimation of the Church the successors of the apostles; while the presbyters became priests, and the deacons Levites in the new Christian Catholic hierarchy.”

In considering the forces which diverted the Primitive Church from its mission, it is impossible to overlook the great change which took place in the fourth century, when Constantine took the Church under his patronage, and let loose upon it the influences of the world. We shall content ourselves by quoting the words of John Wesley on this subject. In his sermon entitled ‘Of the Former Times,’ he says -

“I have been long convinced, from the whole tenor of ancient history, that this very event, Constantine’s calling himself a Christian, and pouring that flood of wealth and honour on the Christian Church, the clergy in particular, was productive of more evil to the Church than all the ten persecutions put together. From the time that power, riches, and honour of all kinds were heaped upon the Christians, vice of all kinds came in like a flood, both on the clergy and laity. From the time that the Church and State, the kingdoms of Christ and of the world, were so strangely and unnaturally blended together, Christianity and Heathenism were so thoroughly incorporated with each other that they will hardly ever be divided till Christ comes to reign upon earth. So that, instead of fancying that the glory of the New Jerusalem covered the earth at that period, we have terrible proof that it was then, and has ever since been, covered with the smoke of the bottomless pit.”
These words are undoubtedly strong, but they come from the pen of a man who was conversant with Church history, and who was stung to the quick by the spectacle of the secularising of the Primitive Church, and the abandonment by that Church of the mission it had received from the lips of its Lord.

It is undoubted that a great fact is represented by the connexion of the Church and the State. A Church coterminous with the State is an ideal after which many men of the highest Christian character have striven; but the attempt to realize that ideal has been attended with dangers, which have assailed the Church as a moral, a spiritual, and an evangelising force. The world has been too much with the Church; and, as a rule, the world has conquered. The warning that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal has been neglected, or has fallen on deaf ears. Those weapons have been taken up to advance the supposed interests of the Church, and the result has been that there are pages of Church history that are covered with records of the persecution of Christian people by Christian people which justify the sneers of Gibbon, and which have left indelible disgrace on those who instigated and practised them. But that is not all. When the spirit of the world pervades the Church, when it captures and subdues its ministers, then the love of luxury, the love of office, and the love of meddling with civil affairs, threaten the existence of the evangelist. When all seek their own, who has time or inclination to follow the wandering souls of men? In such times the evangelist disappears, and his place is taken by the ‘priest,’ who obtrudes himself, the sacraments, and the Church into the position where the evangelist would have put the living Saviour.

In searching for the causes, which diverted the Primitive Church from its task, and led it to abandon its mission, there is one other subject upon which we must touch in closing our survey. There can be no doubt that, after the age of the Twelve Apostles, the manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and the world assumed another form. We do not speak now of the extraordinary evidences which He gave of His presence in the bestowment of gifts of healing and of speaking with tongues. We do not know when these extraordinary gifts ceased. Wesley, speaking on the subject in his sermon on ‘The More Excellent Way,’ says - It does not appear that these extraordinary gifts were common in the Church for more than two or three centuries. We seldom hear of them after that fatal period when the Emperor Constantine called himself a Christian … from that time they almost totally ceased; very few instances of the kind were found. The cause of this was not, as has been vulgarly supposed, ‘because there was no more occasion for them,’ because all the world was become Christians. This is a miserable mistake; not a twentieth part of it was then nominally Christian. The real cause was ‘the love of many,’ almost of all Christians, so called, was ‘waxed cold.’ The Christians had no more of the Spirit of Christ than the other Heathens. The Son of Man, when He came to examine His Church, could hardly find ‘faith upon earth’! This was the real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no longer to be found in the Christian Church; because the Christians were turned Heathens again, and had only a dead form left.
(Works, vol. vii. pp. 26, 27)

Our concern now is not so much with the extraordinary gifts that the Spirit bestowed on the churches, as with the manifestations of His presence which light up the story of the Acts of the Apostles with wonderful radiance. We have seen that both in the Jewish and the Gentile Pentecost’s there was a remarkable display of the Spirit’s presence. It came in answer to prayer; it came at the moment when a living faith in Christ as the ransomer from sin was exercised. We also remember that interesting case which occurred at Ephesus, when certain disciples of John the Baptist, who had accepted the doctrine of repentance, but who had not passed into the clear light of the teaching which concerns the forgiveness of sins, told St. Paul that they had never heard that when a man believes he receives the Holy Ghost. They were bewildered wanderers in the twilight; but St. Paul brought them into the sunshine of noon. Then, when they believed in the Lord Jesus - that is, when they believed in Him as the Saviour from sin - the Holy Spirit came upon them as He came upon those who were assembled in the upper room and in the house of Cornelius. We hold that whatever may have been the intention of God respecting ‘extraordinary gifts,’ the descent of the Holy Spirit upon a man who believes in Christ to the forgiveness of his sins was intended to be a perpetual experience in the Church.

But, further, the manifestations of the Spirit were not confined to the occasions when penitent sinners confessed their sins and found pardon. There are some, in the present day, who upbraid us because we pray for the coming of the Spirit. They say that the Spirit was given on the day of Pentecost, and that we need not implore Him to descend again. Perhaps our phraseology may be imperfect, but we must be careful lest we lose our hold of the fact that the gift of the Spirit to individuals and to churches is repeated. The Holy Spirit is present at all times in the Church and the world, but it is not always that His light glows before our eyes. It is in special moments that He comes to us and thrills us with His touch. Let us remember that, before the day of Pentecost, the Psalmist had uttered that most pathetic prayer, ‘Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.’ Before the day of Pentecost Christ had breathed on His disciples, and had bestowed the Holy Spirit upon them. After the day of Pentecost, when the Church welcomed St. Peter and St. John, who had returned from the council, in answer to prayer ‘the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ Other passages of Scripture teach the fact that the Holy Spirit was not once for all given on the day of Pentecost.

There can be no doubt that to individuals and to churches, in answer to prayer, the Spirit was repeatedly given. And when the Spirit was so given, the fainting soul was revived; the frightened church was quickened and spake the word with boldness; a change was effected which excited the astonishment of the bystanders; a fire fell from heaven which purified the church and caused it to respond to the prophetic cry, ‘Arise, shine, thy light is come; the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’

These occasions may be called times of revival. The word ‘revival’ is old. The Psalmist pleads: ‘Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?’ New life bringing a new joy - that is a fair description of a revival of religion. In searching the history of the Church, after the close of the Apostolic age and onward through gloomy and dreary centuries, we fail to find that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was maintained in the form in which it is presented to us in the New Testament. Let us not do an injustice to the Church. In all times some men and women, who have been the bright particular stars of the firmament, have practised the presence of the Holy Spirit, and have shone with His light and beauty. But we contend that, in the history of the Church, there have been centuries in which the presence and work of the Holy Spirit have only been officially recognized. During those depressing and dangerous ages the gifts of the Spirit have been inappropriate by the living faith of a living Church. Indeed, they have been considered the peculiar possession of a privileged religious caste. When a revival of religion shakes the land, one of the truths which is most quickly demonstrated is that the lord has poured out His Spirit as a free gift 'upon all flesh.' The experiences of the day of Pentecost repeat themselves, and the weary Church, finding its lost youth walks in the morning light of apostolic days.