PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH
Paragraphs 128-144.
128, 129. THE EXTERIOR AND THE INTERIOR VIEW OF HISTORY.
130-143. A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN A HEATHEN CITY. 131. The
Place of Meeting. 132, 133. The Persons Present.
134-137. The Services. 138-148. Abuses and
Irregularities. 139, 140. Of Domestic Life.
141-143. Inside the Church.
144. INFERENCES.
128. History Without and Within.--A holiday visitor to a foreign city
walks through the streets, guidebook in hand, looking at monuments,
churches, public buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this
way is supposed to be made acquainted with the town; but, on
reflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned anything about
it, because he has not been inside the houses. He does not know how
the people live--not even what kind of furniture they have or what kind
of food they eat--not to speak of far deeper matters, such as how they
love, what they admire and pursue, and whether they are content with
their lot.
In reading history one is often at a loss in the same way. It is only
the outside of life that is made visible. It is as if the eye were
carried along the external surface of a tree, instead of seeing a
cross-section of its substance. The pomp and glitter of the court, the
wars waged and the victories won, the changes in the constitution and
the rise and fall of administrations, are faithfully recorded; but the
reader feels that he would learn far more of the real history of the
time if he could see for one hour what was happening beneath the roofs
of the peasant, the shopkeeper, the clergyman and the noble.
Even in Scripture-history there is the same difficulty. In the
narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we receive thrilling accounts of
the external details of Paul's history; we are carried rapidly from
city to city and informed of the incidents which accompanied the
founding of the various churches; but we cannot help wishing sometimes
to stop and learn what one of these churches was like inside. In
Paphos or Iconium, in Thessalonica or Beroea or Corinth, how did things
go on after Paul left? What were the Christians like, and what was the
aspect of their worship?
129. Happily it is possible to obtain this interior view of things.
As Luke's narrative describes the outside of Paul's career, so Paul's
own Epistles permit us to see its deeper aspects. They rewrite the
history on a different plane. This is especially the case with those
Epistles written at the close of his third journey, which cast a flood
of light back upon the period covered by all his journeys. In addition
to the three Epistles already mentioned as having been written at this
time, there is another belonging to the same part of his life--the
First to the Corinthians--which may be said to transport us, as on a
magician's mantle, back over two thousand years and, stationing us in
mid-air above a great Greek city, in which there was a Christian
church, to take the roof off the meeting-house of the Christians and
permit us to see what was going on within.
130. A Christian Gathering in Corinth.--It is a strange spectacle we
witness from this coigne of vantage. It is Sabbath evening, but of
course the heathen city knows of no Sabbath. The day's work at the
busy seaport is over, and the streets are thronged with gay revelers
intent on a night of pleasure, for it is the wickedest city of that
wicked ancient world. Hundreds of merchants and sailors from foreign
parts are lounging about. The gay young Roman, who has come across to
this Paris for a bout of dissipation, drives his light chariot through
the streets. If it is near the time of the annual games, there are
groups of boxers, runners, charioteers and wrestlers, surrounded by
their admirers and discussing their chances of winning the coveted
crowns. In the warm genial climate old and young are out of doors
enjoying the evening hour, while the sun, going down over the Adriatic,
is casting its golden light upon the palaces and temples of the wealthy
city.
131. Meanwhile the little company of Christians has been gathering
from all directions to their place of worship; for it is the hour of
their stated assembly. The place of meeting itself does not rise very
clearly before our view. But at all events it is no gorgeous temple
like those by which it is surrounded; it has not even the pretensions
of the neighboring synagogue. It may be a large room in a private
house or the wareroom of some Christian merchant cleared for the
occasion.
132. Glance round the benches and look at the faces. You at once
discern one marked distinction among them: some have the peculiar
facial contour of the Jew, while the rest are Gentiles of various
nationalities; and the latter are the majority. But look closer still
and you notice another distinction: some wear the ring which denotes
that they are free, while others are slaves; and the latter
preponderate. Here and there among the Gentile members there is one
with the regular features of the born Greek, perhaps shaded with the
pale thoughtfulness of the philosopher or distinguished with the
self-confidence of wealth; but not many great, not many mighty, not
many noble are there; the majority belong to what in this pretentious
city would be reckoned the foolish, the weak, the base and despised
things of this world; they are slaves, whose ancestors did not breathe
the pellucid air of Greece but roamed in savage hordes on the banks of
the Danube or the Don.
133. But observe one thing besides on all the faces present--the
terrible traces of their past life. In a modern Christian congregation
one sees in the faces on every hand that peculiar cast of feature which
Christian nurture, inherited through many centuries, has produced; and
it is only here and there that a face may be seen in the lines of which
is written the tale of debauchery or crime. But in this Corinthian
congregation these awful hieroglyphics are everywhere. "Know ye not,"
Paul writes to them, "that the unrighteous shall not inherit the
kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
nor thieves, nor covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom
of God. And such were some of you." Look at that tall, sallow-faced
Greek: he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's swine-pens. Look at that
low-browed Scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird.
Look at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew: he has been a Shylock, cutting
his pound of flesh from the gilded youth of Corinth.
Yet there has been a great change. Another story besides the tale of
sin is written on these countenances. "But ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by
the Spirit of our God." Listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth
Psalm: "He took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay." What
pathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces!
They know themselves to be monuments of free grace and dying love.
134. The Services.--But suppose them now all gathered; how does their
worship proceed? There was this difference between their services and
most of ours, that instead of one man conducting them--offering their
prayers, preaching, and giving out the psalms--all the men present were
at liberty to contribute their part. There may have been a leader or
chairman; but one member might read a portion of Scripture, another
offer prayer, a third deliver an address, a fourth raise a hymn, and so
on. Nor does there seem to have been any fixed order in which the
different parts of the service occurred; any member might rise and lead
away the company into praise or prayer or meditation, as he felt
prompted.
135. This peculiarity was due to another great difference between them
and us. The members were endowed with very extraordinary gifts. Some
of them had the power of working miracles, such as the healing of the
sick. Others possessed a strange gift called the gift of tongues. It
is not quite clear what it was; but it seems to have been a kind of
tranced utterance, in which the speaker poured out an impassioned
rhapsody by which his religious feeling received both expression and
exaltation. Some of those who possessed this gift were not able to
tell others the meaning of what they were saying, while others had this
additional power; and there were those who, though not speaking with
tongues themselves, were able to interpret what the inspired speakers
were saying. Then again, there were members who possessed the gift of
prophecy--a very valuable endowment. It was not the power of
predicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the
effects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered
the assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with
uncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him,
and, falling on his face, he confessed that God was among them of a
truth. Other members exercised gifts more like those we are ourselves
acquainted with, such as the gift of teaching or the gift of
management. But in all cases there appears to have been a kind of
immediate inspiration, so that what they did was not the effect of
calculation or preparation, but of a strong present impulse.
136. These phenomena are so remarkable that, if narrated in a history,
they would put a severe strain on belief. But the evidence for them is
incontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own
condition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and
besides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these
manifestations. They show with what mighty force, at its first
entrance into the world, Christianity took possession of the spirits
which it touched. Each believer received, generally at his baptism,
when the hands of the baptizer were laid on him, his special gift,
which, if he remained faithful to it, he continued to exercise. It was
the Holy Spirit, poured forth without stint, that entered into the
spirits of men and distributed these gifts among them severally as He
willed; and each member had to make use of his gift for the benefit of
the whole body.
137. After the services just described were over, the members sat down
together to a love-feast, which was wound up with the breaking of bread
in the Lord's Supper; and then, after a fraternal kiss, they parted to
their homes. It was a memorable scene, radiant with brotherly love and
alive with outbreaking spiritual power. As the Christians wended their
way homeward through the careless groups of the heathen city, they were
conscious of having experienced that which eye had not seen nor ear
heard.
138. Abuses and Irregularities.--But truth demands that the dark side
of the picture be shown as well as the bright one. There were abuses
and irregularities in the Church which it is exceedingly painful to
recall. These were due to two things--the antecedents of the members
and the mixture in the Church of Jewish and Gentile elements. If it be
remembered how vast was the change which most of the members had made
in passing from the worship of the heathen temples to the pure and
simple worship of Christianity, it will not excite surprise that their
old life still clung to them or that they did not clearly distinguish
which things needed to be changed and which might continue as they had
been.
139. Yet it startles us to learn that some of them were living in
gross sensuality, and that the more philosophical defended this on
principle. One member, apparently a person of wealth and position, was
openly living in a connection which would have been a scandal even
among heathens, and, though Paul had indignantly written to have him
excommunicated, the Church had failed to obey, affecting to
misunderstand the order. Others had been allured back to take part in
the feasts in the idol temples, notwithstanding their accompaniments of
drunkenness and revelry. They excused themselves with the plea that
they no longer ate the feast in honor of the gods, but only as an
ordinary meal, and argued that they would have to go out of the world
if they were not sometimes to associate with sinners.
140. It is evident that these abuses belonged to the Gentile section
of the Church. In the Jewish section, on the other hand, there were
strange doubts and scruples about the same subjects. Some, for
instance, revolted with the loose behavior of their Gentile brethren,
had gone to the opposite extreme, denouncing marriage altogether and
raising anxious questions as to whether widows might marry again,
whether a Christian married to a heathen wife ought to put her away,
and other points of the same nature. While some of the Gentile
converts were participating in the idol feasts, some of the Jewish ones
had scruples about buying in the market the meat which had been offered
in sacrifice to idols, and looked with censure on their brethren who
allowed themselves this freedom.
141. These difficulties belonged to the domestic life of the
Christians; but, in their public meetings also, there were grave
irregularities. The very gifts of the Spirit were perverted into
instruments of sin; for those possessed of the more showy gifts, such
as miracles and tongues, were too fond of displaying them, and turned
them into grounds of boasting. This led to confusion and even uproar;
for sometimes two or three of those who spoke with tongues would be
pouring forth their unintelligible utterances at once, so that, as Paul
said, if any stranger had entered their meeting, he would have
concluded that they were all mad. The prophets spoke at wearisome
length, and too many pressed forward to take part in the services.
Paul had sternly to rebuke these extravagances, insisting on the
principle that the spirits of the prophets were subject to the
prophets, and that, therefore, the spiritual impulse was no apology for
disorder.
142. But there were still worse things inside the Church. Even the
sacredness of the Lord's Supper was profaned. It seems that the
members were in the habit of taking with them to church the bread and
wine which were needed for this sacrament; but the wealthy brought
abundant and choice supplies and, instead of waiting for their poorer
brethren and sharing their provisions with them, began to eat and drink
so gluttonously that the table of the Lord actually resounded with
drunkenness and riot.
143. One more dark touch must be added to this sad picture. In spite
of the brotherly kiss with which their meetings closed, they had fallen
into mutual rivalry and contention. No doubt this was due to the
heterogeneous elements brought together in the Church; but it had been
allowed to go to great lengths. Brother went to law with brother in
the heathen courts instead of seeking the arbitration of a Christian
friend. The body of the members was split up into four theological
factions. Some called themselves after Paul himself. These treated
the scruples of the weaker brethren about meats and other things with
scorn. Others took the name of Apollonians from Apollos, an eloquent
teacher from Alexandria, who visited Corinth between Paul's second and
third journeys. These were the philosophical party; they denied the
doctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to suppose that the
scattered atoms of the dead body could ever be united again. The third
party took the name of Peter, or Cephas, as in their Hebrew purism they
preferred to call him. These were narrow-minded Jews, who objected to
the liberality of Paul's views. The fourth party affected to be above
all parties and called themselves simply Christians. Like many
despisers of the sects since then, who have used the name of Christian
in the same way, these were the most bitterly sectarian of all and
rejected Paul's authority with malicious scorn.
144. Inferences.--Such is the checkered picture of one of Paul's
churches given in one of his own Epistles; and it shows several things
with much impressiveness. It shows, for instance, how exceptional,
even in that age, his own mind and character were, and what a blessing
his gifts and graces of good sense, of large sympathy blended with
conscientious firmness, of personal purity and honor, were to the
infant Church. It shows that it is not behind but in front that we
have to look for the golden age of Christianity. It shows how perilous
it is to assume that the prevalence of any ecclesiastical usage at that
time must constitute a rule for all times. Everything of this kind was
evidently at the experimental stage. Indeed, in the latest writings of
Paul we find the picture of a very different state of things, in which
the worship and discipline of the Church were far more fixed and
orderly. It is not for a pattern of the machinery of a church we ought
to go back to this early time, but for a spectacle of fresh and
transforming spiritual power. This is what will always attract to the
Apostolic Age the longing eyes of Christians; the power of the Spirit
was energizing in every member, the tides of fresh emotion swelled in
every breast, and all felt that the dayspring of a new revelation had
visited them; life, love, light were diffusing themselves everywhere.
Even the vices of the young Church were the irregularities of abundant
life, for the lack of which the lifeless order of many a subsequent
generation has been a poor compensation.