Clearly, too, between all religious bodies of which this holds there is no complete suspension of true Church fellowship; and so round the whole compass of the field there is exhibited the unity of the Church invisible. But this all-pervading fellowship consists not merely in the fact that each acknowledges the scriptural baptism of the others, but in this, that all can look back in common to a primitive period of the Church which in the main extends much farther down than Scripture and the Apostolic Age; that each accords to the others the right to expansion at the cost of the non-Christian world; and that they accept each other, if not in the fellowship of other forms of Christian work, at all events in the fellowship of this work of extension.

§ 152. Second Theorem.—All separations in the Church are merely temporary.

1. If between the separate portions of the Church, fellowship is not completely suspended—if, that is, each separation is relative—we must recognize (if each part is conceived as having a life of its own) that in each there is a twofold movement: at one time the motive of unity is more prominent, at another this weakens and the motive of separation becomes stronger. This of itself implies the possibility that if a moment of the first kind should coincide with the emergence of a new antithesis within the whole, the previously active motive of separation might merge in the latter, and the particular Church which had hitherto stood by itself thus throw itself wholly on one side of the new antithesis, so becoming an integral part of it, and its previous character passing over with it as a merely subordinate feature. Or the Church in question may break up altogether, some of its members turning to one side of the new antithesis and some to the other. In this case, however, the old antithesis will gradually lose its intensity, having become subordinate to the new one. And even without this, if any of the other circumstances change, the interest felt in the old antithesis may so decline that it no longer retains power to hold a special communion together. Or, to assume the best that could be said of such a particular Church, namely, that it rests on some spiritual peculiarity which the Spirit appropriates as a special instrument, even such a case, spatially limited as it is, is one of merely transient validity. This is a view, however, which it is only possible to take of such communions as show Christian piety assuming all round an individual form; there must be greater transience in proportion as the unity that forms the core of the particular communion is small and inadequate. Hence no special communion ought ever to be based on the peculiarities of a specially prominent individual,⁴ and no communion has the prospect of long life which seeks to base itself merely on divergent moral practice in the absence of relatively different doctrine, or conversely simply on certain peculiar doctrines in the absence of different ways of life.

To the more fixed divisions belong also those which rest on physical grounds and are delimited by national affinities or by language. And yet for one thing these natural forms are themselves temporary; for another, Christianity more than anything else has exerted a helpful influence on the inter-communion of languages and peoples. Hence inward forces of division often overflow these limits; at one time they bind together the Churches of different peoples and tongues in a whole of like spirit and form, at another they sever in opposition elements that naturally belong together.

2. From this it follows of itself that the zeal with which the individual clings to his particular communion can only be genuine, in the sense that no injury is thereby done to full interest in the all-combining unity of the Church invisible, if it is kept within certain limits. The essential thing is that each should love the special form of Christianity to which he adheres only as a transient form of the one abiding Church, though a form that involves a temporary being of its own. A love so qualified is very far from indifference, for it starts with the fact that it is only through his special communion that each stands in union with the whole Church. But equally it is very unlike the partisan assumption, often to be met with when the ardour of ecclesiastical antagonism has risen to a certain point, that antagonism can only be removed by the other side coming over to our side. The extremes here (which need not now be touched upon) we usually describe by the terms ‘indifferentism’ and ‘proselytizing.’ But to accept in advance the position that a form already acknowledged to be temporary will one day actually disappear is not indifferentism in the least: that can only be charged on one who is unable to regard his relationship to the communion to which he belongs as more than casual, and is unconscious of having any inward reason for decision one way or the other. Nor is the effort to commend one’s own communion in the strongest way to members of other communions what we call proselytizing in the bad sense, otherwise Christianity as such, and Evangelical Christianity in particular, would have been objectionable from the first. No: nature itself prompts to such efforts whenever in another communion we see an enervation or corruption of Christian piety. Indeed, in the partisan assumption just mentioned, this very fact is accepted generally, and therefore the effort, if organized on this basis, is justified as an effort operating on universal lines; and for that reason it ought not to be charged upon the members of an opposed communion as unchristian. Proselytizing of the objectionable type is that which regards the extension of one’s own communion as an absolute end, and uses individuals for this purpose as mere means.

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Footnotes

1. ↩

2. Quidam ita perturbant ecclesiae pacem, ut conentur ante tempus separare se a zizania, atque hoc errore excaecati ipsi potius a Christi unitate separentur. August., de fide et opp. c. 4. ↩

3. It is probably only to individuals of this kind that 1 John 4⁵ refers. ↩

4. Cf. 1 Cor. 1¹². ↩