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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 59

The Church a Spiritual Organisation

The Church a Spiritual Organisation.

Suffer me, then, on this occasion to remind you of the first great characteristic of the Church, viz., that she is a spiritual organisation—a character which will be so freely acknowledged that I am in danger of being charged with the utterance of a mere truism; but I am not so satisfied that this, her essential character, is always clearly present to the minds of her members; and I am only too well aware that the proper consequences of this fact are far from being accepted or even page break perceived. I wish to point out a mistake into which many fall in the application of those passages of holy Scripture which assert this spirituality, or argue from it as an admitted fact; these passages are habitually applied as though they only had reference to the Church in her supernatural relations and not to her material relations or moral condition. If we are told that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal," perhaps we think of the Church as militant against the Devil and his angels, but forget the world and the flesh. If we call to mind that conquest is declared to be "not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts," we take the conquest as referring to besetting sins or our manifold temptations, forgetting that these words were spoken on behalf of a prince of the ancient ecclesia who greatly needed support amid the very material obstacles which obstructed his building of the temple of God. When Christ said "My Kingdom is not of this world," surely no one supposes that he was speaking of the heavens and the angelic hosts; and if he was speaking of the ecclesia which the kletoi would form upon earth He was insisting upon its essential character, notwithstanding the fact, surely not unknown to Him, that the Church must ever be constituted of physical agents as well as evermore affected by material conditions. I cannot largely unfold, in such an address, the processes by which that which is natural becomes subordinated to that which is spiritual, but the case of the individual member of the kingdom illustrates sufficiently the nature of the whole. Christ's religion, into the fellowship of which we are admitted, is not to be regarded as a mere compact between two more or less independent beings for considerations which induce them thus to combine, but is rather the incorporation of the nature of the one into that of the other, Incarnate Deity being the means of this incorporation and eternal energising Spirit the instrument thereof. Thus of the individual it is said "your life is hid with Christ in God," and it is because thus united with the heavenly Head that we derive power to will and act in obedience to the will of Christ. What is true of the part is true of the whole. What is the mystical body but an aggregation of material bodies and immaterial souls, spiritualised by this mystical union that is betwixt Christ and His Church in the extension to, and penetration of, all by the living and life-giving Christ?

I repeat then, that the essential characteristic of the Church is that she is a spiritual organisation, having indeed relations on every hand with natural and even material things, which natural and material things she is not to despise and reject, but these, though they be rather her accidents than her nature, she is yet to interpenetrate and sanctify.

How wide-reaching, brother clergy and beloved laity, is this great principle to which I have drawn your attention. How constantly, too, it must present itself in the practical details of our work. If the kingdom be spiritual, then must the laws of the kingdom be spiritual, not carnal; and I say this in full recognition of the fact that we are flesh and blood, and that we have to do with such things as title deeds and money—that clergy need support, and that laity are called on for effort and should exhibit wisdom and care. I am no solifidian—I do not put an idle expression of faith in the place of a rational observation of our natural surroundings, and of prudent action in accordance with the same; but I do think this great spiritual institution is in danger if, instead of a bold adherence to her magnificent prerogative of spiritual principles, which reach to the very source of all power and might, she begins to rely upon petty maxims of worldly policy and to feel safe only when hedged about by resolutions and statutes, framed oftentimes to meet the circumstances, real or imaginary, of the moment, whereas those very laws of carnal commandment may themselves, at the next revolution of the wheel of time, become a weakness and a snare. Egypt, in sacred figure, always represents the world, and Israel the spiritual kingdom; and the warning description which God gives of Egypt to Israel is that she is as a broken reed, which, if a man lean thereon, she will go into his hand and pierce it. In like manner, I do believe that when the Church of Christ turns from His law of love and sacred influences to the minutiæ of minatory regulations she is not providing that her body may be rent.

I am not without perception of the kind of answers which might be offered to these reflections; but I pass on, only pleading that they may not be misapprehended. Suffer me, indeed, by anticipation, to make the same pica for that which I proceed to say, for I have not yet done with the application of my proposition. It falls to my lot, dear brethren, both clerical and lay, from some peculiarities which appertain to it, to sow principles which need sowing, though they may not bring forth fruit till after my departure. I think it needful to emphasise as strongly as I can