This is not the strong point of Nonconformist churches. We pride
ourselves on our individualism, and that is all very well. We believe
in direct access of each soul to Christ, that men must come to Him one
by one, that religion is purely a personal matter, and the firmness
with which we hold this tends to make us weak in combined action. It
cannot be truthfully denied that both in the relations of our churches
to one another, and in the internal organisation of these, we are and
have been too loosely compacted, and have forgotten that two is more
than one _plus_ one, so that we are only helping to redress the
balance a little when we insist upon the importance of organisation in
our churches.
And first of all--remember the principles in subordination to which
our organisation must be framed.
What are we united by? Common love and faith to Christ, or rather
Christ Himself. 'One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
brethren.' So there must be nothing in our organisation which is
inconsistent with Christ's supreme place among us, and with our
individual obedience to Him. There are to be no 'lords over God's
heritage' in the Church of Christ. There are churches in which the
temptation to be such affects the official chiefly, and there are
others, with a different polity, in which it is chiefly a Diotrephes,
who loves to have pre-eminence. Character, zeal, social station, even
wealth will always confer a certain influence, and their possessors
will be tempted to set up their own will or opinions as dominant in
the Church. Such men are sinning against the very bond of Christian
union. Organisation which is bought by investing one man with
authority, is too dearly purchased at the cost of individual
development on the individual's own lines. A row of clipped yew-trees
is not an inspiring sight.
And yet again what are we organised for? Not merely for our own growth
or spiritual advantage, but also, and more especially, for spreading
faith in Christ and advancing His glory. All our organisation, then,
is but an arrangement for doing our work, and if it hinders that, it
is cumbrous and must be cut away or modified, at all hazards.
Ecclesiastical martinets are still to be found, to whom drill is
all-important, and who see no use in irregular valour, but they are a
diminishing number, and they may be recommended to ponder the old wise
saying: 'Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by
the strength of the ox.' If the one aim is a 'clean crib' the best way
to secure that is to keep it empty; but if a harvest is the aim, there
must be cultivation, and one must accept the consequences of having a
strong team to plough. The end of drill is fighting. The parade-ground
and its exercising is in order that a corps may be hurled against the
enemy, or may stand unmoved, like a solid breakwater against a charge
which it flings off in idle spray, and the end of the Church's
organisation is that it may move _en masse_, without waste,
against the enemy.
But a further guiding principle to shape Christian organisation is
that of the Church as the body of Christ. That requires that there
shall be work for every member. Christ has endowed His members with
varying gifts, powers, opportunities, and has set them in diverse
circumstances, that each may give his own contribution to the general
stock of work. Our theory is that each man has his own proper gift
from God, 'one after this manner, and another after that.' But what is
our practice? Take any congregation of Christian people in any of our
churches, and especially in the Free Churches of which I know most,
and is there anything like this wide diversity of forms of service, to
which each contributes? A handful of people do all the work, and the
remainder are idlers. The same small section are in evidence always,
and the rest are nowhere. There are but a few bits of coloured glass
in a kaleidoscope, they take different patterns when the tube is
turned, but they are always the same bits of glass.
There needs to be a far greater variety of forms of work for our
people and more workers in the field. There are too few wheels for the
quantity of water in the river, and, partly for that reason, the
amount of water that runs waste over the sluice is deplorable. There
is a danger in having too many spindles for the power available, but
the danger in modern church organisation is exactly the other way.
Every one should have his own work. In all living creatures,
differentiation of organs increases as the creature rises in the scale
of being, from the simple sac which does everything up to the human
body with a distinct function for every finger. It should not be
possible for a lazy Christian to plead truly as his vindication that
'no man had hired' him. It should be the Church's business to find
work for the unemployed.
The example in our text should enforce the necessity of united work.
David's levies could keep rank. They did not let each man go at his
own rate and by his own road, but kept together, shoulder to shoulder,
with equal stride. They were content to co-operate and be each a part
of a greater whole. That keeping rank is a difficult problem in all
societies, where individual judgments, weaknesses, wills, and
crotchets are at work, but it is apt to be especially difficult in
Christian communities, where one may expect to find individual
characteristics intensified, a luxuriant growth of personal
peculiarities, an intense grip of partial aspects of the great truths
and a corresponding dislike of other aspects of these, and of those
whose favourite truths they are. One would do nothing to clip that
growth, but still Christians who have not learned to subordinate
themselves in and for united work are of little use to God or man.
What does such united work require? Mainly the bridling of self, the
curbing of one's own will, not insisting on forcing one's opinions on
one's brother, not being careful of having one's place secured and
one's honour asserted. Without such virtues no association of man
could survive for a year. If the world managed its societies as the
Church manages its unity, they would collapse quickly. Indeed it is a
strong presumption in favour of Christianity that the Churches have
not killed it long ago. Vanity, pride, self-importance, masterfulness,
pettishness get full play among us. Diotrephes has many descendants
to-day. A cotton mill, even if it were a co-operative one, could not
work long without going into bankruptcy, if there were no more power
of working together than some Christian congregations have. A watch
would be a poor timekeeper, where every wheel tried to set the pace
and be a mainspring, or sulked because the hands moved on the face in
sight of all men, while it had to move round and fit into its brother
wheel in the dark.
Subordination is required as well as co-operation. For if there be
harmonious co-operation in varying offices, there must be degrees and
ranks. The differences of power and gift make degrees, and in every
society there will be leaders. Of course there is no commanding
authority in the Churches. Its leaders are brethren, whose most
imperative highest word is, 'We beseech you.'
Of course, too, these varieties and degrees do not mean real
superiority or inferiority in the eye of God. From the highest point
of view nothing is great or small, there is no higher or lower. The
only measure is quality, the only gauge is motive. 'Small service is
true service while it lasts.' He that receiveth a prophet in the name
of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward. But yet there are, so
far as our work here is concerned, degrees and orders, and we need a
hearty and ungrudging recognition of superiority wherever we find it.
If the 'brother of high degree' needs to be exhorted to beware of
arrogance and imposing his own will on his fellows, the 'brother of
low degree' needs not less to be exhorted to beware of letting envy
and self-will hiss and snarl in his heart at those who are in higher
positions than himself. If the chief of all needs to be reminded that
in Christ's household preeminence means service, the lower no less
needs to be reminded that in Christ's household service means
pre-eminence.
So much, then, for organisation. It is perfectly reconcilable with
democracy that is not mob-ocracy. In fact, democracy needs it most. If
I may venture to speak to the members of the Free Churches, with which
I am best acquainted, I would take upon myself to say that there is
nothing which they need more than that they should show their polity
to be capable of reconciling the freest development of the individual
with the most efficient organisation of the community. The object is
work for Christ, the bond of their fellowship is brotherly union with
Christ. Many eyes are on them to-day, and the task is in their hands
of showing that they can keep rank. The most perfect discipline in war
in old times was found, not amongst the subjects of Eastern despots
who were not free enough to learn to submit, but amongst the republics
of Greece, where men were all on a level in the city, and fell into
their places in the camp, because they loved liberty enough to know
the worth of discipline, and so the slaves of Xerxes were scattered
before the resistless onset of the phalanx of the free. The terrible
legion which moved 'altogether when it moved at all,' and could be
launched at the foe like one javelin of steel, had for its units free
men and equals. There needs freedom for organisation. There needs
organisation for freedom. Let us learn the lesson. 'God is not the
author of confusion, but of order, in all churches of saints.'