_PRIMITIVE DISSENSIONS AND APOSTOLIC PRECAUTIONS._
"Now in these days, when the number of the disciples was
multiplying, there arose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against
the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily
ministration. And the twelve called the multitude of the
disciples unto them, and said, It is not fit that we should
forsake the word of God, and serve tables. Look ye out therefore,
brethren, from among you seven men of good report, full of the
Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But
we will continue stedfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the
word."--ACTS vi. 1-4.
The sixth chapter of the Acts, and the election of the Seven, mark a
distinct advance in the career of the early Church. This sixth chapter
is like the twelfth of Genesis and the introduction of Abraham upon
the stage of sacred history. We feel at once as if the narrative of
Genesis had come into contact with modern times, leaving the
mysterious period of darkness all behind. So is it with the Acts of
the Apostles. The earliest days of the primitive Church were quite
unlike all modern experience. The Church had received a great blessing
and a wondrous revelation, and had been enriched with marvellous
powers. But just as men act when they have experienced a surpassing
joy or a tremendous calamity,--they are upset for a time, they do not
realize their position, they do not take all the circumstances in at
once, nor can they quite settle what their future course shall be;
they must get a little way distant from the joy or the sorrow before
they make their future arrangements,--so was it with the Apostles
during that space of time which elapsed from the Pentecostal
outpouring down to the election of the Seven. We are so accustomed to
think of the Apostles as inspired men, that we forget that inspiration
did not destroy their natural powers or infirmities, but rather must
have acted in consonance with the laws of their constitution. The
Apostles must, to a certain extent, have been upset by the
extraordinary events they had witnessed. They sought and found daily
guidance in the power of the Spirit; but they had made no settled
plans, had not compared or arranged their ideas, had formed no scheme
of doctrine or teaching, had realized nothing concerning the future of
the society they were unconsciously building up under the Divine
leading. God had His plans; the ascended Lord had spoken to the
Apostles concerning the future of the Kingdom of Heaven; but it would
be making the Apostles more than men of like passions and like
infirmities with ourselves to imagine that during those stirring and
eventful days they had consciously realized the whole scheme of
Christian doctrine and government. That period of a few months--for it
could not have been more--was a period of Divine chaos, out of which
the final settlement of the Church of God began slowly to evolve
itself under the direction of God the Holy Ghost. How long, it may be
asked, did this period of unsettlement last? A question which resolves
itself into the further one bearing directly on our present
subject,--what was the date of the election and subsequent martyrdom
of Stephen? The answer to this throws much light on the apostolic
history and the events recorded in the first five chapters of this
book.
I. St. Stephen was put to death some time in the year 37 A.D., after
Pontius Pilate had been recalled from the government of Palestine, and
before his successor had arrived to take up the reins of power.[115]
The Jewish authorities took advantage of the interregnum in order to
gratify their spite against the eminent orator who was doing so much
damage to their cause. Under ordinary circumstances the Jewish
Sanhedrin could not put a man to death unless they had received the
fiat of the Roman authorities. Now, however, during this interval,
there was no supreme authority from whom this fiat could be secured,
and so they seized the opportunity and executed Stephen as a
blasphemer, according to the method prescribed in the law of Moses.
This happened in the year 37 A.D., about four years after the
Crucifixion. We must, however, observe another point. During the
latter years of his administration, Pontius Pilate had been acting in
a most tyrannical manner. This fact explains a circumstance which must
strike the most casual reader of the Acts. We there read that the
supreme Jewish council made two attempts to restrain the Apostles; the
first after the healing of the cripple at the Temple Gate, and the
second when Gamaliel dissuaded them from their purposes of blood.
After that they allowed the Apostles to pursue their course without
any hostility. This appears to the casual reader more striking, more
difficult to understand, than it was in reality. We are now obliged to
think of Judaism and Christianity as opposed and mutually exclusive
religions; we cannot conceive of a man being a Jew and a Christian at
the same time. But it was not so with the Apostles and their followers
at the period of which we are writing. This may seem contradictory to
what I have elsewhere stated as to the antagonistic character of the
two religions. But the apparent inconsistency is easily explained. As
full-blown and realized systems, Judaism and Christianity are
inconsistent. The one was a bud, the other an expanded flower. The
same individual bulb cannot be at the same moment a bud and a flower.
But the Apostles had not as yet realized Christianity as a full-blown
system, nor grasped all its consequences. There was no inconsistency
when they made a conjoint profession of Judaism and Christianity. The
Apostles and their followers were all scrupulous observers of the law
of Moses; and no dwellers in Jerusalem were more regular attendants at
the Temple worship than the persons who had as yet no distinct name,
and were known only as followers of the Prophet of Nazareth. To take
an illustration from modern ecclesiastical history, the Apostles and
the early Jerusalem Church must have been simply known to the Jewish
authorities, just as the first Methodists at Oxford were known to the
Church authorities of John Wesley's earlier days, as stricter members
of the Church of England than the usual run of people were. This fact
alone lessens the difficulty we might find in accounting for the
statements made as to the continued activity of the Apostles, and the
freedom they enjoyed even after they had been solemnly warned by the
Sanhedrin. Neither the Apostles themselves nor the Jewish council
recognised as yet any religious opposition in the teaching of Peter
and his brethren. The Apostles themselves had not yet formulated
their ideas nor perceived whither their principles would ultimately
lead them. No one indeed would have been more surprised than
themselves had they foreseen the antagonistic position into which they
would be ultimately forced; and as for the Sanhedrin, the only charge
they brought against the Apostles was not a religious one at all, but
merely that they were challenging the conduct and decision of the
authorities concerning the execution of Jesus Christ, and, as the High
Priest put it, "intend to bring this Man's blood upon us."[116] But
then history reveals to us some other facts which completely explain
the difficulty and vindicate the historical accuracy of the sacred
narrative. St. Stephen was put to death in the year 37. At that time
he may have been acting as a deacon for two, or even three, years,
during which Christian teaching and views made very rapid progress,
all unopposed by the Jewish authorities, simply because their
attention was concentrated on other topics of much more pressing
interest. Pilate was appointed governor of Palestine in 26 A.D. He
ruled it for ten years, till the end of 36 A.D., when he was recalled.
God causes all things to work together for good, and overrules even
state changes to the development of His purposes. Pilate's whole
period of rule was, as I have already said, marked by tyranny; but the
concluding years were the worst. The members of the Sanhedrin were
then specially excited by two actions which touched themselves most
keenly. He seized on the accumulated proceeds of the Temple-tax of
two drachmas, about eighteen pence, paid by every Jew throughout the
world, which then amounted to a vast sum, expending it in making an
aqueduct for the supply of Jerusalem. This action affected the
pecuniary resources of the Jewish authorities. But he attacked them on
a dearer point still, for he set up the images of the emperor in the
Holy City, and thus wounded them in their religious feelings,
introducing the abomination of desolation into the most sacred
places.[117]
[115] See the authorities for the chronology of this period as
given in Lewin's _Fasti Sacri_, pp. 247-53.
[116] The Church during its earliest years called itself merely
the Way, not recognising the term Christian at all. This is
brought out clearly in the Revised Version, as in Acts ix. 2, xix.
9, 23, xxiv. 14. The adoption of the name Christian probably
marked the more distinct separation of the Church from the
synagogue.
[117] See Josephus, _Antiqq._, XVIII., iii., 1, 2.
All the attention of the priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and
the people, was concentrated upon the violent deeds of Pilate. They
had no time to think of the Apostles,--who, indeed, must themselves
have shared in the national enthusiasm and universal hostility which
Pilate's attempts excited. A common opposition stilled, for the time,
the internal strife and controversy about the prophet of Nazareth
which had, for a little, rent asunder the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Let us now repeat the dates to which we have attained. St. Stephen was
executed in 37 A.D.; his election took place probably in 34 A.D. The
first seven chapters of the Acts set before us, then, all we know of
the history of the earliest four years of the Church's life and work;
and yet though very briefly told, that history tallies with what we
learn from writers like Josephus and Philo.
II. Let us now return to the text of our narrative. This sixth chapter
offers a very useful glimpse into the inner life of the primitive
Church. It shows us what led up to the election of the Seven in these
words: "Now in these days, when the number of the disciples was
multiplying, there arose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily
ministration."
(_a_) The election sprang out of the multiplying, and the multiplying
begat a murmuring among the disciples. There is here teaching for the
Church of all time, plain and evident to every reader, a lesson which
history has repeated from age to age. Increase of numbers does not
always mean increase of happiness, increase of devotion, increase of
true spiritual life, but has often brought increase of trouble and
discontent alone. What a lesson of patient submission under present
trials the wise man may here read. God has made all things double one
against another; and when He bestows such notable increase as He
granted to the apostolic Church, He adds thereto some counter-balancing
disadvantage to keep His people low and make them humble. Undiluted
joy, unmitigated success, is not to be the portion of God's people
while tabernacling here below. How often has the lesson been repeated
in their experience of the past as in our own personal experience as
well!
The trial of the apostolic Church was typical of the trials which
awaited future ages. The Church in the Diocletian persecution, for
instance, was wasted and torn. The records of that last great trial
through which the Church passed, just prior to her final triumph over
Paganism, are lighted up by the fires of the most determined attempt
ever made to crush the faith of the Crucified One. How often during
that last persecution God's faithful ones must have wept in secret
over the ruin of the holy places and the threatened destruction of the
faith! Yet the trials of the hours of adversity were as nothing
compared with the dangers which beset the Church when the faith
triumphed under Constantine, and the multitude of the disciples was
increased and multiplied by the power of imperial patronage. The
trials of the day of persecution were external, and utterly powerless
to affect the spiritual life of Christ's mystical body. The trials of
a multiplying and enlarging Church were internal; they arose from
unbelief, and hypocrisy, and want of Christian love, and were
destructive of the life of God in the human soul. The dangers of
success, the subtle temptations of prosperity, making us proud,
contemptuous of others, self-conscious, dependent wholly upon man and
independent of God, are the lessons, ecclesiastical, social, and
personal, pressed upon us by the opening words of this sixth chapter.
(_b_) These words, again, correct a popular mistake, and reproduce a
warning of our Master too often forgotten. When the disciples were
increasing, and the hearts of the Apostles all aglow with the success
vouchsafed them, "a murmuring arose between the Grecian Jews and the
Hebrews." What a glimpse we get here into the very heart and centre of
early Christian social life. It is often the hardest task in
historical researches to get such a glimpse as here is given. We know
the outer life of societies, of families, of dynasties. We see them in
their external form and symmetry: we behold them in their company
dress and in their public appearances; but till we get to know and
realize their common every-day life, how they ate, drank, slept, how
their social intercourse was maintained, we fail to grasp the most
important side of their existence. The primitive Church is often
thought of and spoken of as if its social and spiritual life were
wholly unlike our own; as if sin and infirmity were entirely absent,
and perfect holiness there prevailed. This expression, "Now in these
days there arose a murmuring," shows us that the presence of
supernatural gifts, the power of working miracles and speaking with
other tongues, did not raise the spiritual level of individual
believers above that we find in the Church of the present day. The
distribution of alms is always attended by jealousies and disputes,
rendering the work one of the most unpleasant tasks which can be
undertaken by any man. No matter how earnestly one strives to be fair
and just, no matter how diligently one may seek to balance claim
against claim and righteously to satisfy the wants of those who seek
relief, still there will always be minds that will never be content,
and will strive to detect injustice and wrong and favouritism, no
matter how upright the intention may be. What a comfort to God's
servant striving to do his duty is the study of this sixth chapter of
the Acts! Fretting and worry, weary days and sleepless nights, are
often the only reward which the Christian philanthropist receives in
return for his exertions. But here comes in the Acts of the Apostles
to cheer. It was just the same with the Apostles, for they must have
been the chief almoners or distributers of the Church's common fund
prior to the election of the Seven. The Apostles themselves did not
escape the accusation of favouritism, and we may be well content to
bear and suffer what the Apostles were compelled to endure. Let us
only take heed that like them we suffer wrongfully, and that our
conscience testify that we have striven to do everything in the sight
of the Lord Jesus Christ; and then, disregarding all human murmuring
and criticism, we should calmly proceed upon our work, in no way
discouraged because the recipients of Christian bounty still act as
even the primitive Christians did. This is one important lesson we
gain from this passage.
(_c_) We may, again, learn another great truth from this incident, and
that is, that the primitive Church was no ideal communion, but a
society with failings and weaknesses and discontent, exactly like
those which exist in the Church of our own times. The favourite
argument with controversialists of the Church of Rome, when trying to
draw proselytes from among Protestants, is, as logicians say, of an _à
priori_ type. They will enlarge upon the importance of religion and
religious truth, and upon the awful consequences which will result
from a mistake on such a vital question, and then they will argue that
God must have constituted a living infallible guide on such an
important topic, and that guide is in their opinion the Pope, as the
head of the Catholic Church. The Scriptures are full of
warnings--unnoticed warnings they often are, but still they are full
of them--as to the untrustworthy character of all such kind of
arguments. In this sixth chapter, for instance, the thoughtful and
meditative student can see a specimen of these providential
admonitions, and a reason for its insertion in the sacred story.
Christ came to establish the Christian Church upon earth. For this
purpose He lived and suffered and rose again. For this purpose He sent
forth the Third Person of the Holy Trinity to lead and guide and dwell
in His Church; and surely, _à priori_, we might as well conclude that
in the Church so founded, so guided, so ruled by Peter and the rest of
the Apostles, there would have been found no such thing as
favouritism, or murmuring, or discontent,--sentiments which might
exist in the unregenerate world, but which should find no place in the
kingdom of the Spirit. But, when we turn to the sacred record of
Christ's sayings, and the inspired history of Christ's Church, we find
that all our _à priori_ presumptions and all our logical anticipations
are put to flight, for the Master warns us in the thirteenth of St.
Matthew, when speaking His wondrous parables concerning the Kingdom of
Heaven, that sin and imperfection will ever find their place in His
Church; and then the history of the Acts of the Apostles comes in to
confirm the inspired prophecy, and we see from this chapter how the
primitive Church of Christ was torn and racked with mere earthly
feelings and mere human infirmities, like the ordinary worldly
societies which existed all around; "there arose a murmuring" even in
the Church where Apostles taught, where the Holy Ghost dwelt, and
where the Pentecostal gifts were displayed. The occasion of the
murmuring, too, is noteworthy and prophetic. It was like the trial
under which man fell and by which Christ was tempted. It was a mere
material temptation. Even in the primitive Church, living as it did in
the region and presence of the supernatural, expecting every day and
hour the return of the ascended Lord, even there material
considerations entered, and the world and the things thereof found a
place, and caused divisions where they would seem to have been
strictly excluded by the very conditions of the Church's existence.
The Church and the world there touched and influenced one another; and
so it must be always. There is a world indeed against which the Church
must ever protest--the world of impure lusts and wicked desires, the
world of which Paganism was the presiding genius; but then there is a
world in which the Church must exist and with which it must deal, the
world which God has created and ordained, the world of human society
and human wants, feelings, desires, appetites. With these the Church
must ever come in contact. Monasticism and asceticism have endeavoured
indeed in the past to get rid of this world. They cut men and women
off from marriage and separated them from society, and reduced human
wants to a minimum; and yet nature asserted itself, and the
corruptions of monasticism have been a divinely-ordered protest
against foolish attempts to separate between things spiritual and
things secular, between the Church founded by Christ and the world
created by God.[118] The murmuring arose on this occasion because the
Apostles made no such mistake, but recognised fearlessly that the
Church of Christ took cognizance of such a question as the daily
distribution and the temporal wants of its disciples. The apostolic
Church did not disdain a mere economic question, and yet the Church of
our own time has been slow enough to follow its example; but, thank
God, it is learning more and more of its duty in this respect. The
time has been when nothing was considered worthy of the notice of the
Christian pulpit or of Church synods and Church courts save purely
spiritual and doctrinal questions. The vast subjects of education, of
the social life, of the amusements of the people, the methods of
legislation or statesmanship, were thought outside the region of
Christian activity, and were utterly neglected or else left wholly to
those who made no profession at least of being guided by Christian
principle. But now we have learned the important truth that the Church
is a Divine leaven placed in the mass of human society to permeate it
through and through; and perhaps the present danger is that the clergy
should forget the apostolic warning, true for every age, that while
the Church in its totality, priests and people, should take an active
interest in these questions, and strive to mould the whole life of man
on Christian principles, it is not at the same time "fit that the
ministry should forsake the word of God and serve tables."
[118] The term world is one that has very various meanings in
Scripture, and good people have often made serious practical
mistakes by confounding these meanings. I once met a serious young
man disposed to the views of the "Brethren," who gravely told me
that he thought it wrong to admire beautiful scenery because it
was written, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world." There are three distinct uses of the term "world" in
Scripture: as expressing, (1) the material earth, Psalm xxiv. 1,
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and
they that dwell therein;" (2) the people on the earth, John iii.
16, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son"
for it; (3) the impure lusts and desires which found full scope
under paganism, and still intrude themselves into the kingdom of
Christ, 1 John ii. 15, 16, "Love not the world, neither the things
that are in the world.... For all that is in the world, the lust
of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life,
is not of the Father, but is of the world." It is evident that if
we take the bad meaning of world in this last passage and apply it
to the other two we shall end in the old Manichean view that the
material world and the men on it are the handiwork of a bad or
inferior deity, and therefore should be entirely rejected. I know
that some very grave and serious people have fallen into this
confusion, and have thus banished all sweetness and light from
their own lives and from those of their families. It is a curious
circumstance, too, that we read in ancient writers that the
Manichean heresy always recommended itself to persons of a similar
temperament, who in consequence led lives of a very strict and
puritanical type. They looked upon the world and all that was in
it as the devil's creation. How then could they smile upon, love,
or enjoy anything therein? See the article "Manicheans" in the
_Dict. Christ. Biog._
III. But we have not yet done with this murmuring or with the lessons
it furnishes for the Church of the future. What lay at the basis of
this murmuring, and of the jealousy thereby indicated? "There arose a
murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews;" a racial question
developed itself, and racial, or perhaps we should rather say, in this
case, social and linguistic, differences found place in the apostolic
Church, and gave rise to serious quarrels even where the Spirit in
fullest measure and in extraordinary power was enjoyed. There was
bitter dissension between Jews and Samaritans, though they believed in
the same God and reverenced the same revelation. Political
circumstances in the past sufficiently explain that quarrel. There was
almost, if not quite, as bitter hostility between the Grecians and the
Hebrews, because they spoke different languages and practised diverse
customs, and that though they worshipped in the same temple and
belonged to the same nation. The origin of these differences in the
Christian Church of Jerusalem goes back to a very distant period. Here
comes in the use of the Apocrypha, "which the Church doth read for
example of life and instruction of manners." If we wish to understand
the course of events in the Acts we must refer to the books of
Maccabees, where is told the romantic story of the struggle of the
Jews against the Greek kings of Syria, who tried to force them into
conformity with the religion of Greece, which then was counted the
religion of civilization and of culture. The result was that the
intensely national party became bitterly hostile to everything
pertaining to Greece and its civilization. The Jews of Palestine of
that period became like the purely Celtic Irish of the Reformation
epoch. The Irish identified the Reformation with England and English
influence, just as the Jews identified Paganism with Greece and Syria,
and Greek influence; and the result was that the Irish became the most
intensely ultramontane nation, and the Palestinian Jews became the
most intensely narrow and prejudiced nation of their time. The
Palestinian or Hebrew Jews, speaking the Aramaeic or Chaldee tongue,
scorned Greek language and all traces of Greek civilization, while
the Jews of the Dispersion, specially those of Alexandria, strove to
recommend the Jewish religion to the Gentile world, whose civilization
and culture they appreciated, and whose language they used. The
opposition of the Hebrew to the Grecian Jews was very bitter, and
expressed itself in language which has come down to us in the Talmudic
writings. "Cursed be he who teacheth his son the learning of the
Greeks," was a saying among the Hebrews; while again, we hear of
Rabban Simeon, the son of Gamaliel, St. Paul's teacher, who used to
embody his hatred of the Grecians in the following story: "There were
a thousand boys in my father's school, of whom five hundred learned
the law and five hundred the wisdom of the Greeks; and there is not
one of the latter now alive, excepting myself here and my uncle's son
in Asia."[119] Heaven itself was supposed by the Hebrews to have
plainly declared its hostility against their Grecian opponents. Hence,
naturally, arose the same divisions at Jerusalem. There were in that
city nearly five hundred synagogues, a considerable proportion of
which belonged to the Grecian Jews. All classes and all the
synagogues, Hebrew and Grecian alike, contributed their quota to the
earliest converts won by the Apostles; and these converts brought
their old jealousies and oppositions with them into the Church of
Christ. The Hebrew or the Grecian Jew of yesterday could not forget,
to-day, because he had embraced a belief in Jesus of Nazareth as the
Messiah, all his old feelings and his old hereditary quarrels, and
hence sprang the Christian dissensions of which we read, prophetic of
so many similar racial and social and linguistic dissensions in the
Church down to the present time. The Acts of the Apostles is a kind of
magic mirror for Church history. In the olden times men dreamt of a
magic mirror into which one could look and see the course of their
future life depicted. We can see something of the same in this
inspired book. The bitter dissensions which racial and linguistic
differences have made in the Church of every age are here depicted in
miniature. The quarrels between East and West, between Greeks and
Latins, between Latins and Teutons, between Teuton and Celt, between
Roman Catholic and Protestant, between the Whites and Negroes, between
European Christians and Hindoo converts; the scandalous scenes still
enacted round the Holy Place at Jerusalem, where peace is kept between
nominal Christians only by the intervention of Mahometan
soldiers,--all turn upon the same points and embody the same
principles, and may best find solution upon the lines laid down by the
Apostles. And what were these lines? They laid down that there are
diversities of functions and of work in the Church of Christ; there is
a ministry of the word, and there is a serving of tables. One class
should not absorb every function; for if it does, the highest function
of all, the ministry of the word and prayer, will inevitably suffer.
Well, indeed, would it have been had this lesson been far more laid to
heart. How many a schism and rent in the visible Church of Christ has
been caused because no work, no spiritual function, was found for a
newly-awakened layman anxious to do something for Him who had done so
much for his soul. The principle here laid down in germ is a very
fruitful one, suitable for every age. A new crisis, a fresh
departure, an unexpected need, has arisen, and a new organization is
therefore at once devised by the Apostles; and well would it have been
had their example found closer imitation. We have been too much in the
habit of looking upon the Church of Christ as if it were once for all
stereotyped in apostolic times, and as if there were nothing to be
done in the living present save to adapt these ancient institutions to
our modern needs. The Roman Catholic Church has been in many respects
more true to apostolic principles than the children of the
Reformation. With all her intense conservatism Rome has never
hesitated to develop new organizations as new needs have arisen, and
that in the boldest manner. It has often been remarked that the Church
of Rome would never have lost John Wesley and the Wesleyans as the
Church of England did. She would have put a brown cassock upon him,
and girded him with a rope, and sent him forth as the head of a new
order, to do the work to which he felt impelled and for which God had
qualified him. Experience has taught us, however, that we cannot
safely neglect apostolic precedent; and the warning implied in the
words of the Apostles, "it is not fit that we should forsake the word
of God and serve tables," has been amply fulfilled. The highest
ministry of the word has been injured by the accumulation of all
public work in the Church on one class alone. What minister of Jesus
Christ does not feel that, even with the wider and more apostolic
views now prevalent, with all the recognition of the service which
godly Christian laymen render, the old tradition is still strong, and
clergymen are too absorbed in the mere serving of tables, to the
neglect of their higher functions? The laity often complain of the
poor, thin, meagre character of the preaching to which they are
compelled to listen; but how can it be otherwise when they demand so
much purely secular service, so much serving of tables from those
whose great work is to teach? The Church of England, in her service
for the ordination of priests, demands from the candidates whether
they will devote themselves to the study of the Word of God, and such
other studies as bear upon the same. I often wonder how her clergy are
now to fulfil this solemn vow, when frequently they have not a night
in the week at home, save perhaps Saturday evening, and when, from
early morning to late at night, all their energies are swallowed up in
the work of schools, and clubs, and charitable organizations, and
parochial visitation, leaving little time and still less energy for
the work of meditation and thought and study. The clergy are the
Lord's prophets, watchmen upon the walls of Zion. It is their great
business to explain the Lord's will, to translate the ideas of the
Bible into the language of modern life, to apply the Divine principles
of doctrine and discipline laid down in the Bible to the ever-varying
wants of our complex modern civilization; and how can this function be
discharged unless there be time for reading and for thinking, so as to
gain a true notion of what are these modern wants, and to find out how
the eternal principles of the Scriptures are to be applied to them? We
require a great deal more organized assistance in the work of the
Church, and then, when that assistance is forthcoming, we may expect
and demand that the highest ministry of all, "the ministry of the Word
and prayer," shall be discharged with greater efficiency and blessing.
The Apostles in meeting this crisis, laid down a law of true
development and living growth in the divine society. The Church of
Christ is ever to have the power to organize herself in face of new
departures, while at the same time they proclaim the absolute
necessity and the perpetual obligation of the Christian ministry in
its highest aspect; for surely if even for Apostles it was needful
that their whole time should be devoted to the ministry of the word of
God and prayer, and the Church of that time, with all its wondrous
gifts, demanded such a ministry, there ought to exist in the modern
Church also an order of men wholly separated unto those solemn duties.
[119] Lightfoot's _Horæ Heb._, Acts vi. 1, where there is a long
and learned discussion, extending over several pages, upon the
distinction between the Hebrew and the Grecian Jews.
IV. The Apostles having determined upon the creation of a new
organization to deal with a new need, then appeal to the people for
their assistance, and call upon them to select the persons who shall
be its members; but they, at the same time, reserve their own rights
and authority, and, when the selection has been made, claim the power
of ordination and appointment for themselves. The people nominated
while the Apostles appointed. The Apostles took the most effective
plan to quiet the trouble which had arisen when they took the people
into their confidence. The Church has been often described as the
mother of modern freedom. The councils of old time were the models and
forerunners of modern parliaments. The councils and synods of the
Church set an example of open discussion and of legislative assemblies
in ages when tyrannical authority had swallowed up every other vestige
of liberty. The Church from the beginning, and in the Acts of the
Apostles, clearly showed that its government was not to be an absolute
clerical despotism, but a free Christian republic, where clergy and
people were to take counsel together. It is a noteworthy thing indeed,
that even in the Roman Catholic Church, where the exclusive claims of
the clergy have been most pressed, the recognition of the rights of
the laity in the matter of Church councils and debates has found place
down to modern times. The representatives of the Emperor and other
Christian princes took their seats in the Council of Trent, jointly
with bishops and other ecclesiastics; and it was only at the Vatican
Council of 1870 that this last lingering trace of lay rights finally
disappeared. The Apostles laid down by their action the principle of
Church freedom, and the mutual rights of clergy and people; but they
also gave a very practical hint for the peaceful management of
organizations, whether ecclesiastical, or social, or political. They
knew what was the right thing to do, but they did not impose their
will by the mere exercise of authority; they took counsel with the
people, and the result was that a speedy solution of all their
difficulties was arrived at. How many a quarrel in life would be
avoided, how many a rough place would be made smooth, were the
apostolic example always followed. Men naturally resist a law imposed
from without without any appearance of consultation with them or of
sanction on their part; but men willingly yield obedience to laws,
even though they may dislike them, which have been passed with their
assent and appeal to their reason. In Church matters especially would
this rule apply, and the example of the Apostles be most profitably
followed. Autocratic action on the part of the clergy in small matters
has often destroyed the unity and harmony of congregations, and has
planted roots of bitterness which have ruined ministerial usefulness.
While steadily maintaining great fundamental principles, a little tact
and thought, a wise condescension to human feeling, will often win the
day, and carry measures which would otherwise be vigorously resisted.
Finally, the Apostles enunciate the principles which should guide the
Church in its selection of officials, specially when they have to deal
with the temporal concerns of the Society. "Look ye out therefore from
among you seven men of good report." Attempts have been made to
explain why the number was fixed at seven. Some have asserted that it
was so determined because it was a sacred number, others because there
were now seven congregations in Jerusalem, or seven thousand converts.
Perhaps, however, the true reason was a more commonplace one, and that
was that seven is a very convenient practical number. In case of a
difference of opinion a majority can always be secured on one side or
other, and all blocks avoided. The number seven was long maintained in
connection with the order of deacons, in imitation of the apostolic
institution. A council at Neo-Cæsarea, in the year 314, ordained that
the number of seven deacons should never be exceeded in any city,
while in the Church of Rome the same limitation prevailed from the
second century down to the twelfth, so that the Roman Cardinals, who
were the parochial clergy of Rome, numbered among them merely seven
deacons down to that late period. The seven chosen by the primitive
Church were to be men of good report because they were to be public
functionaries, whose decisions were to allay commotions and
murmurings; and therefore they must be men of weight, in whom the
public had confidence. But, further, they must be men "full of the
Spirit and of wisdom." Piety was not the only qualification; they must
be wise, prudent, sound in judgment as well. Piety is no security for
wisdom, just as in turn wisdom is no security for piety; but both must
be combined in apostolic officials. The Apostles thereby teach the
Church of all time what are the qualifications necessary for effective
administrators and officials. Even in charitable distributions and
financial organizations the Church should hold up the high standard
set before her by the Apostles, and seek out men actuated by religious
principle, guided by religious truth, swayed by Divine love, the
outcome of that Spirit whose grace and blessing are necessary for the
due discharge of any office, whether of service, of charity, or of
worship, in the Church of Jesus Christ; but possessed withal of strong
common sense and vigorous intellectual power, for love and zeal
separated from these often fall into mistakes which make religion and
its adherents a laughing-stock to the world and a hindrance to the
cause of truth and holiness. God can indeed make the weak things of
this world to confound the high and mighty, but it would be
presumptuous in us to think that we can do the same, and therefore
must seek out the instruments best suited in every way to do God's
work and accomplish His purposes.