BY REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
XXII.—What the Churches Need.*
From the Reformation to the present time the professing Church has been marked by many divisions, and many efforts have been put forth, not so much to heal these divisions, as to obliterate them in ways that have no reference to the Word of God. Very often the means used for that end have been far from being creditable to any branch of the Christian Church using them. The Church of Rome, in its efforts to cause that there would be only one Church, used fire and fagots, the Episcopal Church of England, supported by royalty, had recourse in Scotland to the boot and thumbscrews, the Modernistic party in more recent times no doubt thought that they had been very successful in bringing about union by means of doing away with the time-honoured Confession of Faith in its original sense, and giving a formula which was so elastic that people of diametrically opposed opinions could sign it. Union by these means can only serve to make those who embrace them forget what the face of the Church of Christ in the world was like. Church Unions should be devised in Heaven, and, therefore, it is only means which the Lord will acknowledge that will bring about a true union. This clearly indicates the necessity of knowing the mind of the Lord in such a solemn matter. In turn, this raises the question, Who is it that has the mind of the Lord? The Bible supplies the answer, for it is written, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant.” Psalm xxv. 14. The fear of the Lord is that which is wrought in the soul through the saving work of the Holy Spirit, and that work of the Spirit in the heart causes the subject of it to walk in accordance with God’s mind. This equally applies to Churches, and when the Holy Spirit is poured upon the various branches of the Christian Church it will provide them with a common foundation upon which to unite. Anyone looking at the religious world today can see plainly that the greatest need of the Churches is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
We see from the inspired narrative given of the day of Pentecost what this outpouring meant, in its nature and in its fruits. It is a mysterious work in which no creature has a hand, and, therefore, it is from Heaven, and manifests a power which no creature can resist. It overcomes the stoutest hearts, and humbles the proud spirit, so that the creature who is worked upon has to come down to the dust, dependent upon the Holy Spirit to show him how a poor sinner can be saved. This was the manner of the Lord’s dealings with sinners on the day of Pentecost, and also the way He deals with them in every age of time.
- Mr. Colquhoun writes—”I herewith enclose the final article on Episcopacy and Presbyterianism.” I have to admit that there was a pleasure in writing them; and if in any way, they gave pleasure to the readers of the Magazine, I am satisfied.” We sincerely thank Mr. Colquhoun—Editor.
The effect of this work is to cause those who have been worked upon to see matters in a different light from that in which they formerly saw them. Those who were converted on the day of Pentecost would not believe at the Crucifixion that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, but when the Holy Spirit was poured upon them they saw the truth of what Peter laid to their charge; “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain,” and they fully agreed to what he pressed upon them when he said, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” As such a work was needed on the day of Pentecost, so it is needed in our day. Where there is a union between individuals or Churches it should indicate that they are of one mind, and before parties can be of one mind there must be a common platform upon which they can meet. In the case of Church Unions the only common platform that can be found is the Word of God, and where that Word is not to be found there can be no real Christian Union. The Church of Rome has robbed the common people of the Bible, and their pretence of being one Church, and the only Church, is based on darkness, ignorance, and superstition. The Church of England claims to be in the direct line of Apostolic Succession which, after all, they received through the Church of Rome, but the very fact that one will search in vain for this dogma in the Bible shows that they have discarded the Bible on a point so important in their estimation that it holds them in an attitude of aloofness to denominations which, during parts of their history, showed more orthodoxy and evangelical teaching than the Church of England could ever truthfully lay claim to. Again the Church of Scotland, as we have already seen in these articles, has embraced the destructive criticism of the Modernist, so that by the unwarrantable conclusions of these critics, and their so-called “assured results,” they have, as far as their influence goes, robbed the people of the Bible, and left them like a ship at sea, without rudder, compass, or chart. To destroy a people’s faith in the Bible is a most serious matter, for the Bible is the instrument by which the Holy Spirit works, in both wounding and healing sinners. All who are thus worked upon by the Spirit find it very easy to unite upon one common platform. They are convinced by a very painful experience that the whole human race are ruined by the Fall of Adam, and that it is beyond the power of a creature to restore them; by a faith which is the gift of God they are brought to trust in the efficacy of that atonement which was completed on Calvary, and they know that the glory of thus trusting in Christ’s atoning work does not belong to them but to the Holy Spirit who takes of the things of Christ and reveals them unto His people. Very often it has been noticed that when a genuine revival began in any part of the world, it began by the Holy Spirit being poured out as the “Spirit of grace and supplications.” If there is to be a revival that will unite the different sections of the professing church it is, therefore, most obvious that the first need of the Church is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This blessed union and its gracious effects were to be seen after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The devout Jews who came from various provinces, and who had not much in common beyond the fact that they were Jews, began to have “all things in common.”
A Return to the Bible as the Word of God.
The second thing that may be noticed, as among the things which the Churches need, is a return to the Bible as the Word of God. Such a return to the Word of God is a fruit of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. True it is that it is through the Word that the Spirit works, for by it He wounds and He heals, and creates such a love in the soul to the Word that the quickened soul cannot live without the Word. When that Spirit is poured upon all flesh it will be easy for Churches to unite, “for all thy people shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children.” For many years now, it has been considered fashionable, and an indication of advanced learning, to treat the Bible as old-fashioned and not worthy of serious thought in the light of modern knowledge. However the spade of the archaeologist, and the researches of the philologist, have shown clearly where the ignorance lies, and who are not worthy of serious thought. The things that were “most surely believed among us” by the Lord’s people, and which they got from the Bible, have proved themselves to be an impregnable rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, for “the word of the Lord endureth for ever.”
It is to this infallible Word, given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the Churches must return. They must renounce the dogmas of the Church of Rome, the myth of Apostolic Succession and other myths of the Episcopal Church of England, the Arminian Creed of the Church of Scotland, and all the false systems of error and corruption in other churches, and return to the Bible as the only rule of faith and manners. Here they can find doctrines that are strictly in accordance with the mind of God, a mode of worship, church government and practice given infallibly by the Holy Spirit, and if the various churches took that course, church union would be easily effected.
A Sent Ministry.
A third need of the Churches is a sent ministry. In the New Testament we find a sent ministry brought very clearly before us. When the Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, He gave them their commission to preach, saying, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world. Amen.” Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. When thus sent forth, Christ’s ambassadors must declare the whole counsel of God to perishing sinners whether these sinners shall hear or whether they shall forbear. This is what is lacking today to an alarming extent. The most of those who go under the name of preachers of the Gospel reveal clearly that they are strangers to the Gospel. The public press bears witness to that in the fact that the most of professed ministers live as if their one mission in life was to amuse the people. They are ring-leaders at the dance, in the concert hall, and in all the frivolities set up in their parishes, and they seem not to see how incongruous it is to be presiding at vain gatherings, set up to please the flesh, on a Saturday night, and on a Sabbath morning serving a Communion Table. Not only does such conduct show a lack of appreciation of the fitness of things, but it proclaims loudly that such as conduct themselves in this way are blind leaders of the blind. Such can never be anything but a hindrance to the Cause of Christ, for their conduct grieves the Holy Spirit away.
It is another class of ministers altogether which the Church stands in need of. From the Word of God we see that those who were Christ’s ambassadors were men who had passed through painful experiences in this world in connection with their effectual calling, their call to the ministry, and the fulfilment of that ministry. If we take the Apostle Paul as an example we find that it was not like a man asleep that he entered upon his God-honoured and God-honouring work. He knew the experiences of an awakened sinner under the curse of the broken law of God. “I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” Rom. vii. 9. He knew also that is was to be melted at the foot of the cross, saying, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” He was no stranger to the devices of Satan, for he received a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan” to buffet him. In II. Cor. xi. he gives a long list of the hardships he passed through in preaching the Gospel, showing him to be a man fittest above any to give the exhortation, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, to Timothy, “endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” If we take the history of the Church of God, from the earliest times, we see that it was men of that stamp whose labours were acknowledged by God. They were, as the Apostle tells us, “the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ.”
When the Lord comes to unite the Churches, it is not by joining together in an outward union churches whose government and outlook are diametrically opposed. It is by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit accompanying the pure preaching of the Word by men who have been sent out by the Lord Himself, and who have no time for, or inclination after, the foolish amusements of this world. Such preaching, when it becomes world-wide, will throw the tiara off the Pope’s head and wrench the crozier from the hands of occupants of Episcopal Sees; Diotrephes, “who loveth to have the pre-eminence” will be put in his right place, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, for we read that “When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory.” Part of that glory shall be His Church, delivered from all the excrescences of the flesh which men heaped upon her, and the simple New Testament teaching, worship, and government restored, accompanied by a beauty and harmony, impossible in connection with a man-made union. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth. Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion.” Isaiah lii. 7, 8. This harmony can never take place apart from the Scriptures. There will be a searching of God’s Word and a pleading for light upon the truth, and none will seek to accept as doctrine, worship, and government what is merely not forbidden in the Scriptures as the Episcopal Church does. They will act upon the sound principle upon which our Scottish Reformers acted, that nothing was to be allowed in the Church but what is positively commanded in the Scriptures. This will ensure that the face of the Church of Christ on earth will exactly correspond to the pattern of the face of the Church of Christ in the Word of God as was the case with the tabernacle under the Old Testament dispensation concerning which “Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.” Then the universal Church shall come up to the description of the Church given by the Holy Spirit; “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” Song vi. 10. This is a union indeed, never devised on earth, but having its origin in Heaven.