DISCOURSE VI.

ALLEGIANCE TO CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH.

"Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish."— Eph. v. 25-27.

"All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's."I Cor. iii. 21-23.

We come now to the consideration of the fifth and last distinctive constitutional peculiarity of the true Christian Church as tabulated in my second Discourse of this series, viz: "It demanded the heartfelt allegiance, devotion, and fidelity of its adherents first to Christ himself as their great Head and then to each other as fellow-members of his body; and also their separate and united endeavor to preserve, sustain, promote, and honor the church by all rightful means and at all hazard of personal cost and sacrifice in preference to any other association, institution, relationship, or interest of human design and adjustment." That is, under God, the Father of all sentient beings, and Supreme

over all, Christ is to be regarded as chiefest in authority and in claims to loyalty and obedience,— the first in importance; next the church, and all things beside subordinate to these two.

By these affirmations I mean (1) that all allegiance, devotion, and fidelity exercised towards the church. must be secondary to those rendered Christ, who is not simply the nominal but the actual Head of the Church, and who therefore is the rightful ruler over it, the final arbiter of its active polity and administration. Consequently no organization assuming to be the Christian Church has any just claim to the reverence and fealty of its members as against those due to Christ, his authority, his principles, and his spirit. If claims of supremacy of that sort are made they are to be ignored or resisted as unwarrantable usurpations. Loyalty to Christ is the primary and the inviolable obligation.

I mean by the declarations made (2) that, in proper subordination to Christ, the true church should command the next highest allegiance, devotion, and fidelity of its members. And by the true church in this connection I mean what each individual disciple of Christ himself honestly deems the properly constituted organic expression of faith in and loyalty to the Master on the part of those bearing His name. It may be the Romish, Greek, or Protestant church, or some dissenting body of an ecclesiastical character, but it must be one's highest ideal of associated, organized Christian discipleship. For this it is his solemn duty to testify and to work; to the maintenance, prosperity, and

efficiency of this, he is under imperative obligation to devote time, energy, pecuniary means, personal service. He may withdraw or stand aloof from any so-called Christian church which he deems false, corrupt, or in any way unworthy the name it bears, but he is in duty bound to unite himself with others in church relationship, even though there be but two or three thus gathered together. In other words he is to act according to the impulses and requirements of his own socially religious nature, and in obedience to that "law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" which demands unity, brotherhood, co-operation, as a means both of personal growth in grace and divine knowledge and of extending the realm of Christian truth and right. eousness among men. Striving together for the faith of the Gospel" is the demand of the genius of Christianity as it is the condition of Christianity's progress and triumph in the world. Individualism in religion, personal isolation and seclusion, is a bane and not a blessing to him who practices it and to humanity; a hindrance and a foe to the cause of Christ.

By the same statements I mean (3) that while allegiance, devotion, and fidelity to Christ and his church require the proper subordination of all other associations, institutions, relationships, and interests thereto, they do not require any attitude of hostility or of resistance towards them except in cases where there is real setting at naught or trampling under foot principles and precepts which Christ and his church represent and make obligatory upon man

kind, as inhering in the fundamental moral order of the world and as expressive of the will and law of God. It is obvious to every fairly intelligent mind that there are innumerable respects in which loyalty to Christ and his church involve no conflict whatever with other interests, institutions, and concerns; with the affairs of domestic life, of society, of the general community, of the state and nation. Indeed the only conflicts possible are those in which there is some absolute defect, wrong, or evil on the part of the interests, institutions, and concerns themselves. Such being the case, the conflict will be waged for the purpose of overcoming the existing defect, wrong, or evil, and hence must be ultimately for the good of all parties concerned and of the universal public, thus justifying the claim that Christ and his church must hold the first place in the thought and conduct of his loyal disciples.

That the position taken upon the matter under examination is substantially correct I can see no reason for doubt. If the church is what I have declared it to be on the divine and human side; if its grand design, characteristic features, and capabilities are what I have tried to demonstrate, then its growing ascendency and final triumph will insure the regeneration, holiness, and happiness of the world; so that the will of God shall some day be done on earth as it is is heaven. A church of this character and possessing such power for good to mankind, under the headship of Christ, is justly entitled to the undivided and supreme allegiance,

devotion, and fidelity of all who enter its fellowship. Such allegiance, devotion, and fidelity it had on the part of those who early in our era voluntarily attached themselves to it as attested by myriads of self-forgetting, uncompromising martyrs.

I. And now let us inquire what would have been the result had the primitive disciples of Christ regarded their obligation to him and to his church of less moment and so less binding than that which characterized their relation to the prevailing customs. and institutions of social and civil life. In Palestine and wherever Judaism held sway Christ was at the very beginning of his ministry denounced as a pretender, a schismatic, a destroyer of the law and prophets, and even a blasphemer. The common people were warned against him and those who became his followers were in many instances cast out of the synagogue. What was to be done? Those who had espoused him and his cause must either forsake him altogether and allow his cause to go by default, or, continuing loyal and true, must sacrifice personal reputation, social standing, ecclesiastical honor, and in some cases property and even life itself. Faithful to Jesus, contumely, persecution, imprisonment, torture, death, confronted them. What if they, deterred by such threatening contingencies, had forsaken Christ? What if Christ himself had turned from the light and abandoned his mission? Then Christianity would have been still-born and the church would have come to an early death and been laid silent and powerless in its grave.