02.06. God's Order In The Gospel

VI. GOD’S ORDER IN THE GOSPEL OF HIS SON

Conceive of a circle; in it a man on his knees is reading the New Testament. Both the open book and the man’s heart are illumined by the shining of the Holy Spirit. Outside the circle are the man’s family, kindred and friends, society and the government. That illumined book is the law of Christianity. The man is individuality, isolated from family, kindred, society and government and shut in with God the Holy Spirit. His conscience is free to decide without embarrassment or hindrance from all external forces or influences. By the Spirit, through the book, his free conscience leads him to an opening in the circle which leads him to salvation. Conviction, changing of his mind, giving of faith on the Spirit’s part; the exercise of contrition, repentance and faith on the man’s part. These are the constituent elements of regeneration from both divine and human sides. The man is now justified-saved-a child of God. Here is Christian fellowship.

Across the saved man’s path runs a river, called baptism. Up through its waters he comes to a door in another circle. This circle is the church, Christ’s executive and judiciary. In the center of this circle is the Lord’s table. Here is church fellowship and communion. This church is a single congregation, a spiritual body, a pure democracy. Here is the elder or bishop, a simple pastor chosen by the church, and the deacons, who attend to temporal matters. Here is the church conference or court to which brethren bring their grievances for final settlement. Outside in the outlying world are the secular courts. All along the windings of that river of baptism and its tributaries are other church circles, each complete in itself, each with the Lord’s table, and the conference, and the bishop and the deacons. Comity prevails among these churches. There is one law, one Lord, one baptism. A brother in one church, aggrieved against a brother in another church, must carry its case to the church of the offending brother. There is no way to arraign the offending brother before the world’s courts without breaking down God’s barriers of law and putting religion to open shame. Out here in territory filled with churches is a convention, state or national, It is a purely cooperative and advisory body. It is composed of individuals, not churches. It is a method, without an iron organization which would swallow up the churches, to elicit, combine and direct the energies and resources of the willing-hearted in all the churches in order to push great movements of evangelization, establish Christian schools, eleemosynary institutions and devise agencies and means for filling the world with Christian literature, all these mighty enterprises lying beyond the power of a single church.

One successful demonstration that all these great things can be done by a simple and harmless agency of voluntary co-operation of individuals refutes forever the idea of the church as an organized denomination or general body. There is no necessity for it. There is tyranny in it. There is the subversion of Christ’s church in it. There is hierarchy in it. My heart exults! My soul leaps for joy that this Convention has furnished proof beyond all successful contradiction that there is no necessity for a hierarchy in order to promote harmony, secure unity of faith and discipline, and to obtain cooperation broad enough and strong enough to do anything God’s people ought to do. That demonstration lifts itself up like a granite mountain. Transient clouds of angry criticism hang around its outskirts and splinter their petty lightnings on its adamantine sides. Foul aspersion and misrepresentation may spatter their mud and slime around its base. In the caves of its foothills a few skulking wolves of prejudice may make their dens and render night hideous by their howlings. But the mountain itself stands immovable and serene. No mists gather about its summit, far above the range and rage of storms. By night the stars silver its crest and by day its halo of sunlight is like the smile of God. This is God’s order in the gospel of his Son, and the order is itself a distinctive Baptist principle.